A number of customers have asked about the future of the Web Client Software Factory. I want to announce that we are starting to plan for the next release of the Web Client Software Factory. We plan to start the project in the spring of 2009 and plan to deliver this next version with Visual Studio 2010. I need your feedback as to the scope for this next release. The overall process for this release is the following.

  1. Announce intent for release and ask for scope requests
  2. Obtain feedback from you and other customers to create candidate scope list
  3. Publish survey to prioritize candidate scope
  4. Build vision/scope from prioritized scope
  5. Start project & deliver the project (if only it were this easy 

We will take feedback from the following sources for the release:

  • Obtain feedback from my blog and Michael Puleio's blog
  • Obtain feedback from www.codeplex.com/websf
  • Obtain feedback from advisory board
  • Obtain feedback from direct customer discussions

    • We are considering a number of new features for Web Client Software Factory. This list is to get the discussion started but it will not be the final scope which is why we need your feedback. We will not have time to implement all of these features and I am confident that you will provide many other ideas that are not on the list.

    List to start the discussion:

    • Unity for a container
    • Composite support for MVC
    • Support for Web pages through dynamic data
    • Eliminate the use of a base class similar to what we did for Prism
    • Allow library to be pluggable so you can use your own components including the container
    • Support for Silverlight controls on your Web pages
    • Allow Web Client Software Factory controls to be reused with SharePoint
    • How to distribute logic between layers of the architecture
    • Improve performance of CWAB

    I need your feedback on what you think we should focus on. I also need your help to build a list of customers that are using the Web Client Software Factory. I constantly have customers that are asking who else is using it. Additionally it is helpful to have this list to put the business case together for how much budget we should spend on this next release. So please help me build my list of customers.

    As for support, we will continue to provide support for WCSF through our Codeplex site.

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