Rob Relyea - Xamlified

VS2008sp1 Beta contains XML Schema Explorer written with WPF

Rob_Relyea — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:55:38 GMT

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).

WPF/Silverlight/XAML Web News - 2008/05/23

Rob_Relyea — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:27:24 GMT

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

Olivier Dewitt: Perspective - with his new blog on WindowsClient.net, he introduces Perspective a .NET class library with some 3D goodies and more. Run his XBAP 3.5 demo of Perspective.
AGeekTrapped.com: An AutoComplete TextBox in WPF. Part1-A rough first draft. Part2-Making it reusable. Part3-Control Templates . Part4-WPF Flourishes.
IronPythonURLs: Dynamic Script Control fro WPF
DevExpress: WPF Who? some pictures of an upcoming DataGrid control (to be shown at TechEd in June...)

WPF CTP (.NET Framework 3.51sp1 beta)

Ashish Shetty: WPF 3.5sp1: Don't let the SP moniker fool you
RunToTheHills: First .Net 3.5 Disaster & Pixel shaders! then .Net3.5 SP1 problem solved!
WPF SDK: a few details about VS 2008 SP1 Beta
StringFormat details from Lester Lobo and Vince Sibal
Vince Sibal: IEditableCollectionView
Vince Sibal: Non-live scrolling

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

Windows Home Server - humorous ad campaign for Home Server
The Guthrie/Hanselman Conspiracy
Lester Lobo: Join the WPF Test Team. Lester's post is the best of several since it links to a nice video on Soapbox that includes Karen Corby, a WPF/Silverlight PM, talking about working for Microsoft. Also posting on the topic are Ivo, Vince, John, Patrick, Greg. Jay posted a link to windowsclient.net/jobs that lists several Cider, WPF, and UIFx jobs. I didn't know we had that page!

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...

Alex Shed: speaking of games for kids. Alex is working on one also...

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

Gold Coast: WPF for Line of Business Applications - "I'm a big believer that WPF is a great UI technology for LOB applications..."
Marc of Public Sector Developer Weblog: Standalone Validation Block - "It's two gems in one! First, it allows you to use the core validation framework without having to take a dependency on the full Enterprise Library. Second, it has a solution for surfacing the validation in your WPF UI"
Martin Bennedik: WPF integration for VAB update for Enterprise Library 4.0

Silverlight

Vaibhav: Customizing Vertigo's Slide.Show - Image viewing can use a lot of improvement on the web...Slide.Show may help.
BBC's Big Zoomy Photo Thing - this gets addictive...love that <MultiScaleImage />... use your mouse wheel to zoom into the "1" and change pictures by using the menu on the left.
Martin Bennedik: Bamberg. yes, Zoomy pictures are addictive.
Times Reader Beta for the Mac Now Available - NYTimes built a Cocoa app that host silverlight to show a paginated reading experience for their articles, like the Windows version of the Times Reader.
MS CUI Patient Journey Demonstrator - Nice demo app showing what animation, etc... can do for your UI. Like the MDI like "windows"...
Michael S. Scherotter: Silverlight Page Background - add a bit of markup to your HTML page to have SL content be the background for your page.

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

Scott Hanselman: Are Blog URLs important - i think so...haven't been blogging about URLs in a while though...

.NET Framework Client Profile - improving setup experiences for WPF or WinForms Applications

Rob_Relyea — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:18:15 GMT

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.

Growing List of Content about WPF 3.5sp1

Rob_Relyea — Tue, 13 May 2008 12:14:44 GMT

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

C9: Tim Sneath posted a video on Channel 9 showing Ian Ellison-Taylor (GM of WPF, Silverlight UI, Cider) and Kevin Gjerstad (GPM of WPF) on WPF 3.5sp1 (30 min)
C9: David Teitlebaum (PM on WPF Graphics) shows up with some of his great Graphics demos in "WPF 3.5 SP1 Graphics with David Teitlebaum". [Update: Wow, just watched this...had seen most of the cool demos before...but I just saw the multi-input effects that David showed at around 13:50 until 14:50. Amazing image transitions!] [Update: @16:45 he shows a cool WriteableBitmap demo as well]
C9: Tim Sneath discusses "WPF 3.5 SP1 Deployment with Troy Martez" (discusses
C9: Tim Sneath discusses "WPF 3.5 SP1 Performance with Adam Smith". (haven't watched it yet...but first 2 comments make it sounds like a good one to watch!)
C9: "WPF 3.5sp1 Application Model with Jennifer Lee"
C9: "VS 2008sp1 WPF Designer Improvements with Erick Ellis/Mark Wilson-Thomas"

Overview Blogs

Scott Guthrie: VS 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Beta
Tim Sneath: Introducing the third major release of WPF

Feature Drilldown Blogs

Greg Schecter: A Series on GPU-based Effects for WPF
.NET Framework Client Profile is a new way to install a small subset of the .NET Framework that will install faster and with more style than current technologies allow.

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

Documentation for VS 2008 sp1 + .NET 3.5sp1 on vs2008sp1.docs.msdn.microsoft.com

WPF 3.5 & VS 2008 SP1 Beta

Rob_Relyea — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:43:01 GMT

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.

WPF/Silverlight/XAML Web News - 2008/05/09

Rob_Relyea — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:58:42 GMT

WPF Controls

Emphess.Net: A MenuKiller Control - this article is a work in progress detailing how to build a new paradigm for menus...
Filipe Fortes: BindableRun - I recently had to point this out to somebody inside of Microsoft. Ever wanted to databind to a <Run />
Righthand blogs: Developer Express steps into WPF (DXCharts for WPF)

WPF How To

John Gossman: The Attached Behavior Pattern. John describes using attached properties to add behavior via attached properties. I believe this is a common pattern...I recently talked with an ISV who has ~100 attached properties that they have defined for use throughout their project.
Douglas Day: Adding automatic updates to your program (codeproject). This project shows an alternative to ClickOnce for updating your application.
Steve Rodgers: Creating "Expression Blend" Scrollbars in WPF
Josh Smith: Creating the Same Program in Windows Forms and WPF
BrownBot: Handling application close from a user control in WPF
NewThingsILearned: Pack URI Authority - Local Assembly = Executable
Alkampfer's Place: Converting System.Windows.Input.Key to Char or String
XClave: Extensionising Wpf (or Chris’ fun with Extension methods and Wpf)

WPF Tools

WPF Designer in VS2008: WPF and how to move between graphics and XAML describes Shift-F7 as a way to jump between the WPF Designer and the XAML View. F7 jumps to code behind.
Josh Smith: List of Cider Improvements in SP1. We've been talking since Mix08 about what is coming in the "servicing release" for .Net 3.5. These are the first public details about what is coming for WPF developers in VS2008 SP1.
Blend/Design Blog: What would you like to see in the next versions of Blend and Design? Lots of great feedback already in the comments. Make sure the team gets your feedback!

WPF Frameworks

Patterns and Practices Guidance: Caliburn - An MVP Framework for WPF Composite Applications

WPF Books

Billy Hollis looks like he released his book WPF: A Scenario Based Approach
Victor Gaduioso (Identity Mind) has released "Foundation Expression Blend 2: Building Applications in WPF and Silverlight"

Silverlight

Joe Blogs: The Spectrum of RIA. I like Joe's 4 bullets...
Wpf-Graphics.com: Just noticed that Paste2Xaml and ViewerSVG now support Silverlight. See posts in April 2008
Silverlight.net Forums: XamlWriter for Silverlight
Marlon Grech: Silverlight Attached Properties for WPF Developers I need to follow up on this one...ideally Silverlight doesn't have this incompatibility with WPF.
Deep Zoom Composer update - I love <MultiScaleImage /> in Silverlight 2. WPF doesn't have it yet, but it is very cool...
John Gossman: Silverlight: the art of subsetting. John is back to blogging...go check out what he is up to!

Scripting/DLR

Jimmy Schementi: The story of Ruby and Python in Silverlight Jimmy is a PM on the DLR team, he describes the journey of integration of the DLR and Silverlight...

Microsoft Office

IStartedSomething: Search Commands now available from Office Labs. I had heard about this powertoy to make it easier to find commands in Ribbon based office apps for a while, but never used it until now...

WPF Application Quality Guide v0.2

Rob_Relyea — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:45:19 GMT

Back in January we posted v0.1, now we just posted a new version of the WPF Application Quality Guide (v0.2) on WindowsClient.net.

In light of the rapid adoption of the WPF and the continuous requests from partners and customers, the WPF team at Microsoft is happy to present the second preliminary release of the “WPF Application Quality Guide”. We plan to release the Guide in stages, updating and fine-tuning the content, based on feedback provided by you. This second release contains more examples that illustrate how to find the AutomationElement object by using UI Automation; introduction to the WPF programming stack and software testing; high level overview of test methodology, planning, and strategies; visual verification testing; media testing; verification of animations and other transitions; performance best practices resources; security testing considerations; a list of tools for creating, debugging, and testing WPF applications; and additional topics in the Appendix about resources for WPF data binding and debugging, and about WPF interoperability with Win32 and Windows Forms.

We appreciate your feedback, so please leave comments below. Specifically, please let us know what you think of the way we have organized the content and the ease of navigating through it.

The WPF Team

Ivo blogged about this as well, including how to best give feedback at: http://blogs.msdn.com/ivo_manolov/archive/2008/05/08/8474130.aspx

Glenn Block: WPF, from this to that...Wow!

Rob_Relyea — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:44:20 GMT

In "WPF, from this to that...Wow!", Glenn discusses how the PNP team working on "Prism" involved a designer and moved their application from the image on the left to the image on the right.

Clearly, using a designer can do great things for websites...and now for Applications as well. I'd like to see WPF tools help make more of this attainable for developers who are working on their own as well.

May 17th - Karl/Josh - WPF Multi-Tier Biz App Track

Rob_Relyea — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:09:44 GMT

The curriculum for this event that Karl and Josh are leading in Charlotte, NC on May 17th, 2008 sounds great:

http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/may2008codecamp/

Introduction

Before diving into WPF, first briefly get to know Josh and Karl and then have quick overview of what we will cover throughout the day.

WPF UI Architecture

Buildings must rest on a firm foundation in order to avoid falling over. The same holds true for a complex application’s user interface. This session covers fundamental topics necessary for creating a solid foundation upon which large, dynamic, user-friendly business applications can grow.

Data Binding

WPF is all about data binding. It is a core feature of the WPF framework, and professional WPF Developers must thoroughly understand it to be productive. This session reviews the fundamentals of WPF data binding and shows how to leverage data binding in real-world user interfaces.

WPF-Friendly Business Objects

The user interface is just one part of a smart client application. Enabling other parts of your system to leverage the rich capabilities of WPF requires some extra planning and foresight. This session explains how to create business objects that work well with WPF.

Advanced Data Binding

Business data is complicated. Displaying, editing, and validating complex data requires the use of advanced data binding techniques. This session shows how to use the features of WPF data binding that enable Developers to manage the complexity of their data.

WPF Tools & Performance Testing

The WPF community is full of great free utilities and tools that make it easier to program in WPF. This session shows how to use many of the tools, including several tools that aid in testing the performance of a WPF user interface.

MVC and Unit Testing

The Model-View-Controller and Model-View-Presenter patterns are time-tested, developer-approved solutions for creating modular, loosely coupled application architectures. One of the key benefits of using those patterns is that the system is much easier to unit test. This session dives deep into how you can implement MVC in a WPF application, and how to create unit tests for the Model and Controller.

PowerShell + WPF

Rob_Relyea — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:38:26 GMT

I've blogged about PowerShell in the past:

Now, I'm excited to see a few new things in their CTP for PowerShell2:

PowerShell2 CTP includes the ability to run in STA mode (Single Threaded Apartment model). See "WPF from PowerShell - A Splash Screen" from Huddled Masses
Included in the CTP is a "Graphical Windows Powershell" (gpowershell.exe) that I believe is a WPF application. I don't know how it compares with other PowerShell consoles, but I'm always excited to see more WPF apps shipping...

Microsoft Expression Studio 2 Ships!

Rob_Relyea — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:25:36 GMT

Very excited about the great new stuff that the Expression team is now shipping. Another great release - eat, drink and build with XAML!

From the Press Release

• Expression Web 2 adds support for PHP and Adobe Photoshop import based on customer feedback.

• Expression Blend 2, in addition to Silverlight support, adds vertex animation and an improved user interface with a new split design/XAML view.

• Expression Design 2 adds improved exporting functionality including the ability to export slices.

• Expression Media 2 is a robust digital asset management solution for photographers and other creative professionals. It adds support for the latest file formats including RAW, provides geotagging functionality, and is supported by Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office for Mac 2008.

• Expression Encoder 2 is now a core offering of the suite. It allows creative and Web professionals to optimize almost any type of video content quickly for publishing on the Web, either in streaming video, rich-media advertising or other Web 2.0 projects.

microsoft.com/expression content

Expression 2 Features | Trial | Buy It
Soma's blog post
Kirupa's We Launched post on the Expression Team's blog

Yahoo! Messenger for Vista Beta released

Rob_Relyea — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:05:46 GMT

Happy to see the new Beta of Yahoo! Messenger for Vista adds Voice and SMS! That post has a summary of new improvements for this WPF application, download link, and a video walk through of using it.

dotnet mania (Eric Burke) also adds a bit more info about the release in "we are live! (again)"...including the fact that they've focused on startup time (by doing less and loading less code at startup.), have updated many visuals, have internationalized to de-DE and zh-TW, added voice and SMS, etc... He also recommends Vista SP1 (or at least a QFE)!

Congrats to Eric & the team @ Yahoo!

WPF/Silverlight/XAML Web News - 2008/04/30

Rob_Relyea — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:18:13 GMT

WPF Frameworks

Brian Noyes: Prism: Composite WPF Guidance. Great summary of "Prism" from Brian. Must read!

Basically Prism is looking to address most of the same concerns that led to the development of the Composite UI Application Block (CAB) and the Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF). Specifically, if you have a large, complicated smart client application, particularly one developed by multiple (possibly distributed) teams, you can't afford to build it all into one big monolithic mass of UI code in a single or small number of top level windows and their code behind. You will need to modularize the application and compose the UI that the user sees out of smaller, more granular and well factored parts that are as decoupled as possible from one another, but come together to make the end result without an overly complex integration effort.

...

WPF Contests

Josh Smith: Announcing the Podder Skinning Competition - Podder, if you haven't seen it, is a great example of how to enable a skinnable application in WPF...

WPF Tools

geekSpeak: Mole Visualizer + Mole links

WPF How-To

Alex Shed: Using FrameworkElement.Resources as a Simplified Service Registry
Rudi Grobler: Pimp my ListView
TeamLive: Glass Ball in Xaml. yeah Vectors! (+ boo jpegs)
Atul Gupta: Good link with reminder of benefits of ObjectDataProvider vs Direct Object Use.

WPF Controls

Jared Bienz: WPF Transitionals - lots of blog love out there already for this new CodePlex project.
MindScape: Heterogeneouse hierarchies in MindScape's WPF Elements Multicolumn TreeView

Silverlight

Event Horizon: Porting Silverlight 2 to WPF - "found several (as far as I know) undocumented differences between Silverlight 2.0 and WPF that I wanted to share"
Jaime Rodriguez: Viewbox for Silverlight 2
~~SilverlightShow: Why would you specify an event handler in XAML instead of code? I'm sure some of you have opinions on both sides of the fence here...~~ Corrected based on feedback:

Bill Reiss: Why would you specify an event handler in XAML instead of code?

Microsoft

Channel 9: Ori Amiga - Programming the Mesh

Ori Amiga shows a number of demos showing the native Mesh feeds, WPF applications using Mesh, a Silverlight client that supports working on and offline, a custom Facebook application that syncs Facebook photos with Live Mesh, a Mac client that sends photos to Live Mesh and even LINQ queries over Mesh objects

Virtual Earth: Tracking Virtual Earth Tile Usage (for WPF, Silverlight, etc... apps)

Rudi Grobler: docx to FlowDocument

Rob_Relyea — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:18:43 GMT

Browsing WindowsClient.Net's articles, I found Rudi Grobler's recent post that renders simple docx files as FlowDocuments: "OpenXML + FlowDocument = OpenFlowDocument?" Nice use of Linq and extension methods as well.

Previous Web Links in this area

Forum post on OpenXmlDeveloper.org...question for this kind of thing...with no answer...
FlowDocument .xaml and .docx (OpenXML) Writer

Bjarne Stroustrup on DSLs

Rob_Relyea — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:49:08 GMT

MSDN magazine included an interview of Bjarne Stroustrup on the Evolution of Languages. Interesting to read his thoughts on DSLs:

HD You commented on your Web site, "I think we should look for elegance in the applications built, rather than in the languages themselves." Is the move toward domain specific languages (DSLs) a convergence of these?

BS Yes, almost certainly. It is often an attempt in that direction. Sometimes, it even works.

HD What are your thoughts on DSLs in general? What do you envision as the relationship between DSLs and general-purpose languages?

BS I worry about the number of languages being designed, implemented, introduced with great fanfare, and then fading away without significant impact. During this—typically many-years long phase of development—a new language consumes significant resources with essentially no returns. I wrote a paper on this phenomenon called "A Rationale for Semantically Enhanced Library Languages" (research.att.com/~bs/SELLrationale.pdf). I argue for using libraries, possibly supported by tools, and a general-purpose language.

I think that a DSL should be a last resort, not a first. If at all possible, the DSL should be firmly rooted in a general-purpose language and standard tool chains. A DSL needs a general-purpose language (or at least a systems programming language) for its implementation and the implementation of its run-time primitives. I think it would be best if a DSL is consciously and firmly paired with at least one general-purpose language so that it is easy to add new facilities through the use of libraries written in that general-purpose language. Obviously, a professional should master several languages, but I do wonder if the sum of complexity of a variety of DSLs couldn't become so high that it became a problem. Also, many (if not most) DSLs seem to "want to" become general-purpose languages

People should consider if XAML based DSLs make good sense for their file formats. Don't invent a new language, build a new XAML Vocabulary, and be XAML based - like WPF, Silverlight, XPS, Workflow, etc...