Acropolis Team Blog

A new phase for the Acropolis project

2007-10-29T22:00:00Z

The Acropolis incubation project has been a great learning experience for us and we have received a lot of great feedback that will keep us very busy for quite a while.

For example, many developers have told us that they are very excited about the ability to compose WPF applications from re-usable parts and services, and the ability to focus on application business logic rather than application plumbing. We also heard many times that the ability to plug and play different patterns for layout, navigation and transitions was a good way to realize some of the power of WPF without having to be a WPF expert. But we heard from many of you that we need to provide many more out of the box components in order to support the full range of applications that you want to build. This is an area we will be looking very closely at in the future.

We also received a lot of feedback on the need to get the right set of extensibility points in the component model. Many of you are familiar with the Composite UI Application Block (CAB) and wanted to see similar facilities for auto-wiring up components within an application to reduce the amount of code you need to write even further. We have a lot of ideas in this space, and we look forward to getting your feedback on these as we develop them and take them forward, but we have some work to do in this area.

We also heard many times that the tooling experience has to be much simpler and more comprehensive in order to make Acropolis accessible to more developers. This is definitely a key area in which we'd like to invest much more.

We are very excited to be entering the next phase of the project where we will begin to roll many of the Acropolis concepts into future versions of the .NET Framework for the desktop and Silverlight. Unfortunately, while we figure out exactly how to go about this, we have decided not to release any more Acropolis CTP's. We're going to keep the current CTP bits available to allow you to continue prototyping and evaluating the Acropolis concepts. So while there will be no new functionality added to the Acropolis CTP, we do hope that you will continue to provide feedback to us on what you like or don't like.

We do have some good news though! We were pleasantly surprised to get feedback from many of you that you would like to go live with Acropolis based solutions in the short term. To us that validated a lot of the thinking we have been doing and it is a positive indicator of the Acropolis approach. Because of this type of feedback, we want to help you continue to take advantage of the Acropolis concepts and the power of the .NET platform while we figure out the longer term plan.

We are very excited to announce that we are going to be working closely with the Microsoft Patterns & Practices team to provide guidance (samples, applications blocks, patterns and so on) for building composite client applications for .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008. As part of that effort we want to engage with those that have been following the Acropolis project to ensure that this guidance meets your needs. Glenn Block, the Patterns & Practices client product manager, has much more information about the Composite Applications for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 project here http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock/archive/2007/10/26/wpf-composite-client-guidance-it-s-coming.aspx

If you have evaluated Acropolis and are unsure whether to adopt it for your project, or to use the existing CAB, or to wait for the new guidance, our guidance for this situation remains the same - if you are building a Windows Forms LOB composite client (with maybe rich islands of WPF content) you should carefully evaluate the current CAB release. If you are specifically interesting in building composite applications on .NET 3.5, please get involved with the Patterns & Practices project and help us to deliver a guidance package that meets your requirements.

Thanks again for your feedback and expect to hear more in the next couple of months about our future plans.

The Acropolis Team

Acropolis August CTP (VS 2008 Beta2 Refresh) Release available now

2007-08-09T05:31:00Z

This release is mainly an update so that our customers can continue to evaluate “Acropolis” with the latest VS 2008 Beta. In addition to VS 2008 Beta2 support, we have also added one small feature named “FloatingLayoutPane”. We have gotten feedback from our customers and in our forum that basic functionality like showing a floating window is too hard in the July CTP. Please let us know what you think.

Please note, the Acropolis August CTP depends on VS 2008 Beta2, it will not work with VS 2008 Beta1.

Download the bits:

- Acropolis CTP & Documentation

- Acropolis Samples for August CTP

The links will also be posted on http://windowsclient.net/Acropolis soon. We look forward to your feedback.

Thanks,
The Acropolis Team

8/7 Acropolis Post Round up [KathyKam]

2007-08-08T02:02:00Z

It's funny how things come together. In the past week, both community videos we made came online. Make sure you go check them out!

Acropolis Videos:
Virtual Tech Ed - Where Kathy Kam interviews David Hill and Scott Morrison about the project "Acropolis"
Channel 9 - Come meet the "Acropolis" team! We walk the halls with of Building 42 in Microsoft Corporate Campus to meet the Dev, QA, PM behind the project "Acropolis".

Acropolis Tech Ed Presentation:
The presentation we did in TechEd Orlando is now available online!
The Acropolis Client Application Framework - David Hill
Building Rich Client UI with Acropolis - Kathy Kam

Acropolis Samples Deep Dive:
Notepad Sample - Ricky Tan
   Ricky shows how Acropolis makes extension and customization easy for the developer by adding some features that plain old Notepad never had.
RssEagle Sample, Part 1 Extensibility Discussion - Alex Bulankou
   Alex gives an indepth deep dive on some of the core "Acropolis" features that was demonstrated in the RssEagle Sample.
RssEagle Sample, Part 2 Navigation in Acropolis - Alex Bulankou
   Alex gives an indepth presentation on the "Acropolis" Navigation feature. He also demonstrate how RssEagle uses "Acropolis" Navigation to interact with the UI.
Part Portal Sample - Brett Samblanet
   Through the Part Portal, Brett gives an insight into what you can do with "Acropolis". Brett guides the viewers through the various features implemented in the Parts Portal sample. He covers how each of the different pieces of the Part Portal work - including Part Catalog Manager, Part Catalog Browser, Part Portal TabLayoutPane and LayoutPersistence.

Blogs:
New Acropolis Expense Sample Overview - Tad Anderson
Acropolis on Virtual TechEd - Kathy Kam
New Acropolis Interview posted - Brad Abrams
"Acropolis" meet the team - Kathy Kam

New Acropolis Sample: Expense [Kathy Kam]

2007-07-24T05:51:00Z

As we have mentioned in TechEd 2007 - Orlando, our team has been busy developing a LOB focused example. Download it and let us know what you think!

http://brad_abrams.members.winisp.net/Projects/MSExpenseSample/ExpenseSample.exe

This should be up in http://windowsclient.net/Acropolis shortly.

7/20 Acropolis Post Round up [KathyKam]

2007-07-20T12:17:00Z

Another quiet week for the Microsoft Acropolis project...

Community:
Hello World with Microsoft Acropolis Part 2: Services Dependencies [Ezequiel Jadib]

Also, Chris Woodruff will be speaking about Microsoft Acropolis in Michigan.

7/13 Acropolis Post Round up [KathyKam]

2007-07-13T12:00:00Z

Quiet week for the Microsoft Acropolis project...

Community:
July CTP of Acropolis causes consternation [James Vastbinder]
Video Introducing Acropolis [Lab49 Innovation on Demand]

<Editorial Comment>
Seems like the buzz this week all went to the Greek Acropolis for loosing out on being one of the seven new wonders of the world.
</Editorial Comment>

7/6 Acropolis Post Round up [Kathy Kam]

2007-07-06T12:00:00Z

Acropolis Team:
Watch This Space: Acropolis July CTP Coming Soon! [David Hill]
Acropolis on .NET Rocks! [David Hill]
"Acropolis" July CTP Available now! [Kathy Kam]
TechEd Australia and TechEd NZ! See you there~ [Kathy Kam]
Command Connection Points and Exception Handling Reloaded [Dennis Dietrich]
Acropolis July CTP is out! [Brad Abrams]

Community:
Microsoft Acropolis: A .NET Future Today [SD Times]
Microsoft Acropois Disappointment... What the heck are you people talking about???? [Tad Anderson]
Acropolis or Acrapolis? [Kevin Hoffman]
Goodbye Acropolis, I hardly knew you [Fabrice Marguerie]
What is "Acropolis"? [Maor David]
What is Acropolis [Abdel Olakara]

<Editorial Note>
There are a number of post not in English... we appreciate your posts, but because I don't understand the language, I can't tell whether it is useful or relevant. :( Let me know if your non-English post is an indepth look at Acropolis! :)

Also, this week, we got some critical feedback about our direction. I'll be addressing that in my blog.. stay tuned!

</Editorial Note>

"Acropolis" July CTP available now [Kathy Kam]

2007-07-04T23:47:00Z

The Acropolis team is pleased to announce that Acropolis July CTP release is now available for download at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=44977885-86B5-4AA0-9F20-DB365BFB9D10&displaylang=en

Features available in Acropolis July CTP includes:
- Transition Animation improvements – You can now add transition when changing page in TabLayoutPanes!
- Better Design Time support
- Better Custom Theming support
- Various bug fixing driven from community feedback

This release includes many fixes that the community has requested and we are looking forward for more feedback from all of you. Let me know what you think!

Let me go a little more indepth about each of the features:

- Transition Animation improvements

1) You can now add transition when changing page in TabLayoutPanes:

<Windows:TabLayoutPane Parts="{Binding Part.NavigationManager.ActiveParts}"> 
    <Windows:TabLayoutPane.Transition> 
        <WindowsTransitions:RotateTransition Contained="True"/> 
    </Windows:TabLayoutPane.Transition> 
</Windows:TabLayoutPane>

2) Also, you no longer need to specify transition in a PartPane by creating a "Transition" tag, instead you can do this:
What you have to do in CTP1:

<Windows:PartPane Name="RootPart">

<Windows:PartPane.Transition>

<WindowsTransitions:RotateTransition/>

</Windows:PartPane.Transition>

</Windows:PartPane>

What you can do in July CTP:

<Windows:PartPane Name="RootPart" Transition="RotateTransition"/>

- Better Design Time support

We did various improvements on our Design Time. For instance, you can now use the Application Designer to select your themes. (It used to be a combo box that doesn’t work).

- Better Custom Theming support

In CTP1, you can create a custom theme, but you’ll need to copy and paste some framework code to do so. For the July CTP, we have removed that need and the only thing you need to create your own custom theme is to register your theme and the XAML style overrides you’d want. I still need to do a post on how to do this. We also did various theming fix up that our customers reported.
- Various bug fixing driven from community feedback

Too many to list… J

6/29 Acropolis Post Round up [Kathy Kam]

2007-06-29T12:00:00Z

This week, before I post the blogs.. I want to mention the interview David, Nathan and myself did with Richard and Carl at .NET Rocks! Check it out here: Introducing Acropolis

What I like about Acropolis by NickMalik

What I find promising: an Acropolis part can essentially consume a SOA service, allowing the composition of process and activity services to be as simple as snapping parts onto a surface. This is not particularly new from a software ...

My First Acropolis Impressions by Rui Silva

I’ve google about confronting CAB and Acropolis, and I’ve found other people also worried about the actual Acropolis momentum. After the initial fuss it seems that we must lower down our expectations at least for now. ...

Acropolis: Between Elation and Despair

Microsoft announced “Acropolis” at TechEd 2007. Acropolis is a .NET framework and companion tools for building highly interactive applications. ...

Binding Acropolis NavigationManager with ActivePart vs ActiveParts by avalonboy

.csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: ...

Microsoft Codename Acropolis - Unwrapped

20 Jun 2007 by Kevin Hoffman
In this post I take a look at Acropolis - what it is and why should developers be concerned about it. Also, I compare it to some offerings on OS X to help clear things up.

Hello World with Acropolis Part 1 by Ezeauiel Jadib

In this post I will show you how to create a simple Hello World Sample using Acropolis.Acropolis is a set of components and tools that make it easier for developers to build and manage modular, business focused, client .NET applications...

Hello World with Microsoft Acropolis Part Two: Services Dependencies by Ezeauiel Jadib

In my previous sample I showed how to create a Hello World sample using Microsoft Acropolis. Here we will modify that sample to use a service to retrieve the Hello World message...

<Editorial Notes>
Sorry this is a little late. Got caught up working on our next CTP... :) The post this week has been great.. and don't forget to check out our interview with Richard and Carl at .NET Rocks.

Oh and if you wrote a great blog and I missed it this week.. let me know at http://blogs.msdn.com/kathykam ! :)
</Editorial Notes>

Acropolis customer post round up [Kathy Kam]

2007-06-22T04:00:00Z

The Buzz on Acropolis
InfoQ.com - Toronto,Canada
However, with Acropolis, Microsoft will ship it as an add-in to Visual Studio with its own design surfaces. Still up for discussion is support for the ...

WPF: Acropolis Transitions by mdavey
If you ignore the numerous VS Orcas/Acropolis crashes, then you’ll find it worth while investing time in Acropolis. The basic transtions supplied with the first CTP was very PowerPoint but at least the overall Acropolis package is an ...
Lab49 Blog - http://blog.lab49.com

Links for Windows Server 2008 Training - Acropolis etc. by ericnel
We acquired Secure Dimensions to help with the challenge of protecting and licensing code www.securelm.net; Project Acropolis http://windowsclient.net/acropolis/; May release of the Smartclient Software Factory ...
Untitled - http://blogs.msdn.com/ericnel/default.aspx

Microsoft Acropolis by Arnaud
I stumbled upon it yesterday while wandering through the interresting WindowsClient.net site. It appears to be a Microsoft project allowing for quick application generation (using a wizard) but, more interesting, allowing for code to be ...
Microsoft .net 3.0 Training and Consulting - http://dreamdotnet.blogspot.com/

The Buzz on Acropolis
On June 5, David Hill of Microsoft announced the coming of a new client application development framework code-named Acropolis. The intent is to ship in one year's time a set of components and tools to ease the development of complex ...InfoQ
http://www.infoq.com/

Acropolis by The Moth
It looks like this one is now since it has appeared in the Tech Ed US session list (type "Acropolis" in the keyword box, and then hit the Filter button). Out of curiosity I searched the web and found that there is a reference to ...
The Moth - http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/index.htm

Microsoft Code Name "Acropolis" by Ramy Mahrous
Microsoft Code Name “Acropolis” is a set of components and tools intended to make it easier for developers to build and manage modular, business focused, client applications for Microsoft Windows on the .NET Framework Overview ...
FCI-H - http://fci-h.blogspot.com/

These are the ones Brad posted previously:

Enterprise WPF Applications come of "Age" with Acropolis

by Don.NET
Today at WindowsClient.net (Microsoft's new portal for WPF and Winforms) Microsoft introduced the next step in the WPF revolution their "Acropolis" CTP. This is a toolkit for creating modular, business-focused Windows client ...
Don.NET's WPF Designers Blog - http://blog.donburnett.com/

Microsoft "Acropolis"

by Andrej Tozon
If you're on a look for a powerful, extensible application framework for building service-oriented, rich WPF applications, here's a preview of what you can expect from Microsoft in (possibly near) future: Microsoft Acropolis CTP1 is ...
Andrej Tozon's blog - http://tozon.info/blogs/andrej/default.aspx

SYS-CON Media

AJAX World - My First "Acropolis" Application
SYS-CON Media, NJ
NET Framework (Wrox Press) and co-author with Robert Foster of Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development Unleashed. Kevin authors "The .NET Addict's Blog" at.

Acropolis CTP Released

by Shannon Braun
Look's like the Acropolis CTP was released a couple of days ago... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=72386ce5-f206-4d5c-ab09-413b5f31f935&displaylang=en&tm.
Shannon Braun's Weblog - http://www.sysknowlogy.com/

"Acropolis" CTP available for download

The cat is finally out of the bag and available for discussion - Microsoft's "Acropolis" project. Even though I decided to go ahead and port a major project to the CAB (Composite Application Building Block), I have spend the past few ...
Acropolis - http://www.rssmicro.com/?f=1&q=Acropolis

Links (6/4/2007)

12 hours ago by Steve Pietrek
Hello Acropolis - "Acropolis" is a set of components and tools that enables you to build composite client application. Acropolis CTP 1 available; Microsoft acquires Dundas’s data visualization components, SQL 2008 news & download CTP3 ...
A Continuous Learner's Weblog - http://spietrek.blogspot.com/ - References

.NET Client futures- Microsoft code name "Acropolis"

by malovicn
The Microsoft code name “Acropolis” Community Technology Preview 1 is a set of components and tools that make it easier for developers to build and manage modular, business focused, client .NET applications. Acropolis is part of the “. ...
VusCode - Coding dreams since 1998! - http://blog.vuscode.com/malovicn/default.aspx

Acropolis

Integrate and host your modules in applications such as Microsoft Office, or quickly build stand-alone client interfaces. Change the look and feel of your application quickly using built-in themes, or custom designs using XAML. ...
MSDN Blog Postings - http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com

Microsoft Code Name "Acropolis" Community Technology Preview Released

15 hours ago
Microsoft has released the Code Name "Acropolis" Community Technology Preview.
digg / dig - http://digg.com/

Microsoft Code Name "Acropolis" Community Technology Preview Released

by tadanderson
Microsoft has released the Code Name "Acropolis" Community Technology Preview. This is from the help file that you can download from the link below:. "Acropolis" uses a composite application framework to address complex, ...
Real World Software Architecture - http://realworldsa.blogspot.com/

Microsoft Code Name “Acropolis” Community Technology Preview Released

16 hours ago
Microsoft has released the Code Name “Acropolis” Community Technology Preview.
DETECHNORATI - http://detechnorati.com

Microsoft announces "Acropolis" for building composite client ...

16 hours ago by trumpi
"Acropolis" is a set of components and tools that enables you to build composite client application. Great client application has three main components. It has to be cheap to buld, easy to manage and offers a high quality user ...
Trumpi's Blog - http://dotnet.org.za/trumpi/default.aspx

[VistaSoftware] Digest Number 748

by BollywoodX2
Download "Acropolis" Framework for WPF Posted by: "Zia Khan (Hotmail)" ziaukhan@hotmail.com ziaukhan1 Date: Mon Jun 4, 2007 5:37 am ((PDT)). http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx? ...
Vista Software Development - http://vista-software.blogspot.com/

Microsoft "Acropolis"

Microsoft Code Name "Acropolis"; CTP Available

21 hours ago
Acropolis_Help: The Community Technology Preview 1 version of Microsoft Code Name "Acropolis" Help documentation. Download: Microsoft Code Name "Acropolis" Community Technology Preview 1.
Windows portal - News - http://keznews.com/news.php?title=News

Microsoft codename "Acropolis": sounds good!

by Stefano Demiliani
An interesting project seems to come out from Microsoft in these days. Microsoft codename "Acropolis" (actually only a CTP) is a set of components and tools intended to make it easier for developers to build and manage modular, ...
STEFANO DEMILIANI - http://demiliani.com/blog/Default.aspx

Microsoft delivers test build of new tool for building line-of-biz ...

by Mary Jo Foley
At TechEd 2007, Microsoft released a first Community Technology Preview (CTP) build of "Acropolis," a set of components and tools for building line-of-business, portal-style .Net applications.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/

Rich Enterprise Applications with Microsoft "Acropolis"
By Ryan Steward of (RIA and recent Adobe hire fame)

This morning Microsoft made a move to bring the power of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) to the enterprise level developers with a Community Technology Preview of “Acropolis“. Acropolis is interesting for a couple of big reasons. First of all, it brings Windows Forms (WinForms) closer WPF. WinForms is a user interface API that predated WPF and there are a lot of big, business like enterprise applications that are built using WinForms. Acropolis is going to make it easy to incorporate those parts into new applications.

Acropolis

By Craig’s Musings

I’ve been patiently waiting to blog about this for some time. Now that Microsoft has finally gone public with this during this week’s TechEd…

Acropolis’s vision is to revolutionize the way that organizations define, develop, configure, deploy and manage client solutions. Clearly, this is a broad vision, and it will be realized over a set of releases. Having worked with David Hill, Microsoft’s architect on this endeavor, in the past on smart client architectures, I’m confident that this vision will realized.

Acropolis

By Sam Gentile
I've known about, tracked and been briefed on Acropolis for a year now. I'm obviously interested given both my Smart Client preferences as well as our extensive use of CAB + SCBAT in our composite Enterprise type of client. Microsoft finally announced Acropolis at TechEd and released a CTP and Docs. We have been greatly concerned that CAB development has pretty much stopped (now everyone sees why) and how to possibly take the code base into WPF if we wanted to.

Acropolis to replace CAB/SCSF

6 hours ago by Krzysztof Koźmic
When I learned about Acropolis I got the feeling that Microsoft just said: "This is the way you are supposed to do smart client applications", and that it means good bye to CAB. Glenn Block just said it clear and loud: ...
Krzysztof Koźmic's blog - http://kozmic.pl/Atom.aspx

Acropolis: Yet Another Executable XML

by Ayende Rahien
<CsamlFile xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/csaml" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"> <NamespaceDeclaration Identifier="MyNamespace"> <ClassDeclaration Identifier="MyClass" Access="Public"> ...
Ayende @ Rahien - http://ayende.com/Blog/Default.aspx

My newly ordered SCSF and CAB book is outdated before it is printed...

by tadanderson
I pre-ordered the Programming Microsoft Composite UI Application Block and Smart Client Software Factory Book. According to this blog, Smart Client Software Factory v2.0 is the Last Release - Acropolis is the Future, my book is out of ...
Real World Software Architecture - http://realworldsa.blogspot.com/

Microsoft codename “Acropolis” CTP 1 released

by amroamroamro
The Microsoft code name “Acropolis” Community Technology Preview 1 is a set of components and tools that make it easier for developers to build and manage modular, business focused, client .NET applications. Acropolis is part of the “. ...
Amro Khasawneh Blog - http://amroamroamro.wordpress.com

Live from TechEd Day 3

by Nicholas Allen
... people's awareness about the components that Microsoft was shipping. Our role this year has evolved from explaining who we are to more explaining how to use the product. One product that did get announced this year is Acropolis. ...
Nicholas Allen's Indigo Blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/drnick/default.aspx

My newly ordered SCSF and CAB book is outdated before it is printed...

BA: A note on this above... check out Glenn's post on the future of Smart Client.... Your investment in the books are still very, very solid... The best way to prepare for acropolis is to use CAB today!

Microsoft codename “Acropolis” CTP 1 released

'Acropolis' CTP for WPF Development Released
By Bob Familiar
The Microsoft code name "Acropolis" Community Technology Preview 1 is a set of components and tools that make it easier for developers to build and manage modular, business focused, client .NET applications. Acropolis is part of the ". ...
Bob's Blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/bobfamiliar/default.aspx

CAB is dead! Long live CAB!
By Brad Wilson
... Microsoft is headed in. Glenn Block from p&p has a post about the future of the smart client p&p deliverables in light of this announcement, too. I wonder if there's someone on the net who thinks he can re-implement Acropolis in 15 ...
Brad Wilson - The .NET Guy - http://www.agileprogrammer.com/dotnetguy/

Acropolis Client side development... I'm not convinced... yet.
By Brennon Williams [ADMIN]
Take a look at "Acropolis" from Microsoft's WindowsClient.net site and you can't help but think that the Redmond giant is a little confused at which market place it really is in... Maybe it's not and maybe it's just me, ...
- http://expressionblend.com/blogs/default.aspx

BA: Note: I think we do have a good developer designer story, but it is one that empowers the small shops with one "dev" that is also the "designer" and the "DBA" and, btw, he mows the grass out front on the weekends as well. With Acropolis built in set of styles and themes even the designer in a dev-head like me can come out and still look good!

"Acropolis" Community Technology Preview
By Scott Dorman
One of the new technologies being announced at Tech·Ed is "Acropolis". If you have previously used the Microsoft Composite UI Application B lock (CAB) or the Smart Client Software Factory (SCSF), the announcement of the Acropolis should ...
Scott Dorman - http://geekswithblogs.net/sdorman/Default.aspx

<Editorial Note>Ok.. I hope I didn't miss anyone. Brad has posted some of this before.. but as I have said, I want to make this blog the one stop shop for all all the Acropolis customers out there! Also, let me know what topics you want to see here.</Editorial Note>

Acropolis Team post round up... [KathyKam]

2007-06-20T12:00:00Z

Starting this week, I am going to round up all the Acropolis posts (both from the team and from our customers) so that this team blog can be your one stop shop for all Acropolis related content!

This post will contain all the post that was posted before this week from our team and Patterns and Practices. On Friday, I will post all the Acropolis related content from our customers and partners. Starting next week, I will post the round up from both the team and our customers every week. If you have any posts. Contact me directly from http://blogs.msdn.com/kathykam and I'll get you posted!

David Hill:
Introducing Acropolis...
The Top 5 Acropolis Questions At TechEd
Acropolis TechEd Q1: What is Acropolis and what can I do with it
Acropolis TechEd Q2: Cool Aplications with little or no code! Really? Are you sure?
Three New Acropolis Videos Available!

Kathy Kam:
Introduction to Acropolis Layouts
Secret Themes in "Acropolis"

Ricky Tan:
Extending the Acropolis Notepad sample with a Web Browser View

Dennis Dietrich:
Debugging of and error handling for synchronous Commands
The Parts Portal's Dependency Resolver and the Factory Pipeline
Acropolis' "Hello World"
Extending the Notepad sample with a Web Browser View - VB.NET Edition

Brad Abrams:
Hello Acropolis!
Some common Acroplis questions
Bonus Acropolis Information: Video, Live docs and More!
Acropolis CPU\Memory Watcher

Glenn Block:
Acropolis, the future of Smart Client

Acropolis on the Intern-net! [David Poll]

2007-06-19T12:00:00Z

Hello, world! My name is David Poll, a student from UC Berkeley (although I call Southern California, Orange County more specifically, my home). At the moment, I’m doing my second internship with the Acropolis team. Last summer, I came to this team while Acropolis was still at its earliest stages. It was practically just an idea. I had an incredible time, learning about industry and how things tick over here, all while helping to figure out what Acropolis was going to be. And now I’m back, from outer space (well, Berkeley, but close enough!), just in time for our CTP1 release! It’s been a hectic and exciting few weeks around here since I arrived, but we made it!

Anyhow, for a long while, I’ve been keeping quiet about this project, but no longer! Now that we’ve released CTP1, it’s not a secret anymore! Along those same lines, part of my role this summer will be to help get you acquainted with Acropolis. And how, pray tell, will I do this? Well, we’ve got a series of screencasts that we’re preparing for you that will introduce the many features of Acropolis to the world. The screencasts will be recorded by a number of us on the team, ranging from David Hill (who was my internship mentor last summer) to Kathy Kam(my manager this summer), and you’ll probably even hear a little from me! I welcome you to stay tuned and watch for the screencasts as they are produced. There may be only a few rght now, but you can certainly expect to see more soon!

Throughout the summer, I’ll be around. You may see me on the forums, giving screencasts, posting blogs, etc. I hope you’ll join me in welcoming and exploring Acropolis. Be sure to check out our windowsclient.net page, too, where you’ll be able to download Acropolis, sound off in the forums, and learn more about how Acropolis works!

In the meantime…

This has been an Acropolis Intern report. Signing out,

David

P.S. Go Bears!

Links:

Acropolis Screencasts: http://windowsclient.net/learn/videos.aspx#Acropolis+Videos

Acropolis on WindowsClient.net: http://windowsclient.net/Acropolis

Download Acropolis: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=72386CE5-F206-4D5C-AB09-413B5F31F935&displaylang=en

Acropolis Forums on MSDN: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1638&SiteID=1

My Screencasts:

Using Acropolis PartPanes: http://windowsclient.net/learn/video.aspx?v=4224

Using the Acropolis Designer: http://windowsclient.net/learn/video.aspx?v=4223

Extending the Notepad sample with a Web Browser View [Ricky Tan]

2007-06-12T09:35:00Z

The purpose of this post is to show just how easy it is to create additional views with Acropolis to extend the functionality of an application. The application shown here is the Notepad sample included as part of Acropolis CTP1. What the WebBrowserView will do is display the contents of the text in HTML format, like in a web browser.

Step 1: First, add the WebBrowserView. Open the Notepad sample in Visual Studio. In Solution Explorer, right-click the Notepad project and select Add | New Item. In the Add New Item dialog box that appears, select the Acropolis View (WPF) template, change the name to WebBrowserView.xaml and then click Add. In WebBrowserView.xaml.cs, add the following ViewExtensionInfo attribute to the WebBrowserView class declaration (see NotepadPartView.xaml.cs for an example):

[ViewExtensionInfo(DefaultViewTechnologies.WindowsPresentationFoundation,
                   "Web Browser View",
                   "Web Browser View for HTML",
                   typeof(INotepadPartViewContract))]

At this point, you can build and run to see the newly-added view with its default template. Click on the view-selector button, which is on the upper-right of the window (the button in the red circle in the image below), and select Web Browser View to change the view:

Step 2: Next, we shall customize the WebBrowserView. The WebBrowser control is from Windows Forms, so we need to add references to the System.Windows.Forms and WindowsFormsIntegration assemblies to our project. Then, in WebBrowserView.xaml, add the following to the class declaration (together with the other xmlns declarations):

xmlns:WF="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Forms;assembly=System.Windows.Forms"

Replace the default TextBlock with the WebBrowser control, which is hosted in a WindowsFormsHost:

Step 3: Finally, we hook up the WebBrowser control to the value of the NotepadText property from the Part-View contract. In WebBrowserView.xaml.cs, add the following method:

public override void BindToContract(IPartViewContract contract)
{
    base.BindToContract(contract);
    INotepadPartViewContract notepadPart = contract as INotepadPartViewContract;
    if (notepadPart != null && notepadPart.NotepadText.Value != null)
    {
        this.webBrowserControl.DocumentText = notepadPart.NotepadText.Value.ToString();
    }
}

That’s it. Build and run to get the Notepad application started up, then type in or paste in some HTML source, and use the view-selector button to switch between the default Notepad view and the web browser view. Just one ViewExtensionInfo attribute, some XAML declarations, and five lines of code is all you need to extend the Notepad sample with a WebBrowserView.

Welcome To Acropolis!

2007-06-12T04:50:00Z

Welcome to the Acropolis Team Blog!

If you build client applications, especially business focused line-of-business applications, on .NET then we hope that you'll find Acropolis useful and interesting.

We're very excited to have released our first CTP last week during Tech Ed 2007. CTP 1 is an important milestone for us but we have a way to go yet before we reach our destination. We hope you'll join us for that journey - from the CTPs, through the Betas and on to the full release - and help us to make sure that Acropolis really meets your needs.

This blog will your point of contact with the Acropolis team. We'll be posting regularly to keep you up to date on our progress, to answer your questions, and to solicit as much feedback from you as we can.

So what is Acropolis?

In a nutshell, Acropolis is a set of components and tools intended to make it much easier to build modular, business focused clients applications on the .NET Framework.

Many, many developers are using .NET to build successful business oriented client applications today. But we know from speaking to many of these developers that building compelling, easy to use, flexible, customizable, easy to manage client applications that deliver a next generation user experience is not as easy as it should be.

We hope to change that with Acropolis by providing you with the components and tools you need so that you can leverage all of the power of the .NET Framework and the .NET technologies in your client applications much more easily. In fact, we want to not only make it easier to build client applications on the .NET Framework, we want to make it fun again!

The key to Acropolis is its modular approach.

Acropolis lets you divide your application into various functional pieces - components - that each encapsulates some specific pattern, strategy or piece of business or presentation logic. Acropolis then provides the ‘glue' to let you easily recombine these components to make a fully functional application.

This modular approach improves the chances that if you write a component that encapsulates some specific piece of functionality, you'll be able to re-use it in more than one application. Then, you can build your next application more quickly, by re-using your existing components, leaving you to focus on your new application's specific requirements.

The modular approach also improves the chances that if (or rather when!) you have to change your application, due to new requirements, additional functionality, new business process, new business opportunities, etc, you'll be able to do that more easily by adding or replacing components.

We'll be providing many pre-built components with Acropolis. These will provide support for the many common patterns and elements that you'll find in a modern client application - such as those that support navigation, layout, and supporting services like authentication and personalization - leaving you free to focus on your business logic and solving your business problem. And of course, you'll be able to develop your own re-usable components easily, allowing you to encapsulate the patterns and elements that are important to you.

The center of the Acropolis community is located on http://www.windowsclient.net/ - your one stop shop for all things related to .NET client application development. Links to the Acropolis CTP1 downloads, forums, videos and blogs are located on the Acropolis home page at www.windowsclient.net/Acropolis. For a quick intro to Acropolis, check out the Getting Started video here. We'll be posting new samples and videos in the coming weeks to illustrate the various features of Acropolis, so check back often.

We're fairly early in the development cycle for Acropolis - we decided to release this CTP release so that we can get your early feedback on the direction and features of Acropolis and to allow you to get involved in its evolution - so we really need your feedback. Let us know what you like about Acropolis, what you don't like, what you think is missing, and what you think should be removed or changed.

Thanks,

The Acropolis Team.