Rob Relyea - XAMLified

10/31/2008 Update: The talk is over now...I summarize and link to the video of the talk here: PDC08 News: XAML in .NET 4: XAML2009 & System.Xaml.dll

I’m very excited about the XAML talk that Daniel Roth and I are giving at PDC08 this October.  Althought PDC03 & PDC05 saw a bunch of XAML, we’ve never had a talk at PDC or TechEd focused on XAML – the declarative foundation for .NET/Silverlight.  As such, we have a bunch of very interesting things for those of you using XAML. I gave a jpeg preview of one of our demos we’ll be showing. Here is the XAML Talk abstract. And here are links to other sessions.

I’m prototyping and helping design some improvements in XamlWriter.Save() similar to the work that you can see on this wpf forum post about making a faster xamlwriter.

Looking at MSDN’s System.Windows.Markup.Primitives namespace, you’ll see the api documentation.

I’m excited by some of the possibilities we are discovering.

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

• Actipro: PropertyGrid for WPF is almost ready - I've heard a bunch of requests for a property grid from us before.  Blend/Cider use the same one, which I've asked them to ship...but there are no short term plans on that one.  If you need a property grid, I'm glad Actipro is there with one.
•  Telerik Watch: Looking Ahead: Q3 Road Maps posted for WinForms, Silverlight, WPF - RadScheduler, RadChart, RadGauges, new thems, more docs and a new demo framework.

Silverlight

• Simon Brown: JavaFX : why, how and when will it be successful? - SWiK - Link to Presentation on Flex vs Silverlight vs JavaFx.  Flipped through slides...gives Flex the edge on some things, Silverlight on others...in the end appears to recommend Flex or 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

• Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Firefox, ClickOnce, XBAPs and .NET 3.5 SP1 - Diving into Firefox and WPF app details.
• Joel Bennett: NativeConsole.cs - Run console apps and get their output - I've blogged about Joel's PoshConsole before...now he publishes this utility function from that app to help you deal with a Console session.

New Blogger from WPF Team

• Shozub's Blog - WPF and Data : Goals - Shozub starts his first blog...

Adam Kinney posts (wow...great stuff!)

• The Continuum Show - new show about WPF/Silverlight, etc...
• Time to register for PDC.  I'll be there, have a talk on XAML.
• Posted David Teitlebaum's graphic demos!  Thanks! (although I like calling ClothTextbox: <CurtainBox />
• Lawson Office - great WPF app

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).