Lester Lobo taught me ctrl-space yesterday as a way to go back to the default formatting for the text selection. Handy thing to know!
(It works in Word, LiveWriter...probably lots of places?)
WPF Controls
Silverlight
XAML
- Tip: How to set a property in XAML? When I saw the post said there are 4 ways to set a property in XAML, I was surprised. I still don't believe #4 is way to set a property...attribute syntax, property element syntax, and content syntax is what I call the first 3...
WPF/.NET
New Blogger from WPF Team
Adam Kinney posts (wow...great stuff!)
Quick Rob Update
The WPF team shipped 3.5sp1 on August 11th. DataGrid CTP went public in August also. About one month later, we're already hard at work on the next release (no public details yet). As you can see, my blogging has slowed down a bit. I'll see if I can pick it up a little bit, but I'm going to have a very busy fall...as I mentioned above, I'll be at the PDC (have a talk focused on XAML).
I just added a small comment to "Why XAML is powerful" about XAML/MXML/NIB and more.
One of my pet peeves is that many WPF projects I see have a window Title of "Window1" like this:
Please pick a title that is descriptive of your application.
In WPF, you can change your title by:
- Select the Window object in the designer, find "title" in the property grid, and give it a good value; or
- Open Window1.xaml and replace the value of the Title property on the Window element at the root.
Happy to see these videos (from code.msdn.microsoft.com) showing some common scenarios with WPF for Forms over Data in VS2008.
Folks over on WindowsClient.net would like pointers to good podcasts for WPF devs...Kind of like: http://www.asp.net/learn/podcasts/ does.
Any recommendations?
As we announced back at Mix08 and TechEd08, the WPF team is working on a DataGrid and Ribbon control. Today, we've just made the DataGrid available in CTP form on Codeplex (http://CodePlex.com/wpf).
The DataGrid will require 3.5sp1 to run. We'd love to hear what you think...
The whole .NET Framework team is very excited to see 3.5sp1 being released today. 2 blog posts I see talking about some of the new WPF features are here:
many more to come..
I've blogged about this back when it was in early CTP. Now, I'm happy to see that the XML team has shipped their WPF based XML Schema Explorer in VS2008 sp1 beta. See "New XSD Functionality in VS 2008 SP1 Beta".
It is nice to be able to say that part of VS is built with WPF...(beyond the WPF Designer bits which had to use WPF).
My latest links about WPF (Apps, Controls, 3.5sp1 beta, HowTo, for LOB), Silverlight, XAML and URLs
WPF Apps
- Expression Blog: Deep Zoom Composer Update. Yet another WPF based application shipping from MS. This one helps people author content for <MultiScaleImage /> in Silverlight 2.
- Microsoft Pro Photo Tools "provides a set of tools for photographers to perform various tasks with their images—including RAW captures. The current version enables you to quickly geotag your photos, view and edit metadata, and more, leveraging the power of Windows and Microsoft Live Local."
- WPF Showcase - not sure if I've ever pointed people toward the WPF Showcase on WindowsClient.net. Lots more apps up there!
- JMC Photo Gallery - freeware to work/display with your photos. Code available on CodePlex.
- State Street Gang: RegEx and WPF - a WPF app to help you understand RegEx
- Qunatum Bit Designs: QbColorViz - a small WPF app to help you map Color names to their look.
WPF Controls
WPF CTP (.NET Framework 3.51sp1 beta)
WPF
- GeekValley: Microsoft Releases Three Updated Foreign Language ClearType Fonts for Windows XP. Sounds like this will improve small font rendering with WPF for Japanese, Korean and Chinese characters.
- Valerio.net: Digging into the .NET Framewok Code. Matt discusses using Reflector to view or another technique to directly debug .NET framework code in VS.
- Goings On In the Land Of Eclipse includes the following: "Currently Eclipse has 3.4.M7 is available for download. One of the most interesting features is that the user interface now supports WPF on Vista. The Java toolkit SWT now has a WPF back-end, you can see its resolution independence if you look at it through the Magnifier application on Windows. Also, in general, the user interface looks much more integrated into the native platform."
- Mike Hillberg: Model-see, Model-do, and the Poo is Optional. Data visualization shouldn't forget that you need to do things with data as well...
- Daniel Moth: XAML: Level 100. Goes through some of the basics of XAML with WPF in mind. Then proposes what level 200, 300, and 400 are...
- Jeffrey Snover, PowerShell architect: The Future is Here Today. Points to Jaykul's work with PowerShell/WPF...
- James Brundage, PowerShell team member: WPF & PowerShell – Part 1 ( Hello World & Welcome to the Week of WPF ). Love to see the discussion of using WPF from the PowerShell 2.0 CTP.
Microsoft
WPF How To
- Frank La Vigne: Making Your WPF Applications Speak - I hadn't used System.Speech in a long time. My son and I built a little app to help test him with his spelling words. Thanks Frank for reminding me of System.Speech...
- Mike Hillberg: Binding to anonymous types in an XBAP or Silverlight app. Using Linq queries + databinding in WPF/Silverlight...this is a good post to read.
- MSDN Magazine (Shawn Wildermuth): Build More Responsive Apps with the Dispatcher
- ChristophDotNet: WPF UI Update from Background Threads
- US ISV Dev Team: Map Your Data Part1 & Part2
- SerialSeb: Reflecting on my last project. Reflects on his last project with a number of interesting points about WPF/XAML
- Genesis Conduit: WPF, Images and DPI Independance
- Kirupa Chinnathambi: Tutorial: Modifying Animations in C#. I ran into Kirupa, an Expression Program Manager, at the local gym on the basketball court a few weeks ago. He has been doing some pretty cool things...
- ILOG Visualization .NET Blog: Displaying a MS Project XML file using Diagrammer for .NET, WPF, and LinQ Part1
- Martin Bennedik: A fast font drop down list. Remember, combobox is much faster if you change the ItemsPanel to VirtualizingStackPanel. We didn't make this change by default due to app-compat considerations.
- Karsten: Portfolio as WPF and ASP.NET. Karsten posts an app that show a list of all the apps he has built (or helped build) and does it as an XBAP or ASP.NET generated HTML page.
- Dan Rigsby: Margins and Padding in WPF. If I recall correctly, we did this so you could have x1, y1, x2, y2. When you set thickness with just two numbers (x, y), you are setting the horizontal size then the vertical size. When you set thickness with just one number (Z), you are setting all four sizes to the same value. I agree it isn't easy to keep straight all the time, but x1,y1, x2, y2 keeps it good for me...
WPF for LOB
Silverlight
XAML
- This Silverlight Forum discussion reminds me of one of my pet peeves about CLR languages of today. If I know the value of a property as it would be represented in XAML, it isn't always easy to get that code written...
URLs
We're very excited that we're improving the installation experience on machines without .Net 2.0 and later with a new subset of the .NET Framework (~26MB) which we are introducing in .NET Framework 3.5sp1 called the Client Profile.
- Troy Martez (the Program Manager on the WPF team that has been leading our efforts in this space) just blogged "Introducing the .NET Framework Client Profile".
- In addition Justin Van Patten, a Program Manager on the CLR team, blogged ".NET Framework Client Profile" which includes the list of all the assemblies that make up the Client Profile and discusses some more details.
We hope this helps your customers have better experiences with your WPF or Winforms application.
Yesterday I did a brief post about "WPF 3.5 & VS 2008 SP1 Beta". Now I follow it up with a list of content about this release. I plan on growing this list as new content appears, so come on back...
Channel9 Videos
Overview Blogs
Feature Drilldown Blogs
WPF Tools
- Expression Blend 2.5 Update - The beta of .NET 3.5sp1 has a problem that the Blend team has worked around...but you need this special build. This special build is fine to replace any of your uses of 2.5 preview, if you'd like.
Documentation
Scott Guthrie just did the launch blog post about the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 beta & VS 2008 SP1 beta. Tim Sneath also add a number of other great details with "Introducing the 3rd major release of WPF". Lots of great stuff for WPF developers and users. Go check it out!
We'll be happy to help answer questions for this release on the WPF Forums. Perhaps it makes sense to have a great title that starts with "3.5sp1:"...
Watch for some Channel9 content this week as well as various blogs going into details.
I'll try to keep you apprised of the latest content out there...by growing a list of links on this post, or having new posts.
WPF release history
- November 2006 - .NET Framework 3.0 ships.
- November 2007 - .NET Framework 3.5 & VS 2008 ships.
- Summer 2008 - .Net Framework 3.5 sp1 & VS 2008 sp1 will ship.
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