My next inspiration from the algorithms introduced in Flash Math Creativity was based on the work of Jamie MacDonald . In looking at his work, I quickly realized that I was going to need to brush up on my trigonometry skills. This led me to another great Friend of Ed book, Foundation ActionScript Animation...

Tim Sneath has been doing a great job of blogging the many Vista/WPF showcase applications that are being deployed right now. If you are looking for a quick list of URLs that you can hit for the .XBAP or .APPLICATION files, please go to the WPF Application Portfolio wiki , which I've updated with all...

You can now go download Expression Blend Beta 2 as well as Expression Design Beta 1 . Both applications have received significant work since their last incarnation with tons of bugs fixed. Go give 'em a whirl.

I just posted a screencast showing how to wire up UI elements using Blend. The general premise is that databinding in WPF is about more than just data; it also allows you to connect UI properties, like wiring a slider up to a progress bar. Blend exposes this is a very useable way, once you know your...

I've written about XBAPs and full trust in the past, but never as thoroughly as Karen Corby just did in her post on XBAP trust levels . She spent a lot of time getting this post correct, reviewing with various folks within Microsoft and providing very solid guidance. It is the kind of post that should...

I'm here at CES, where Yahoo and Microsoft showed off a preview of the new Yahoo Messenger for Vista, built entirely on WPF. Yahoo has a great landing page with screenshots, a screencast of the app and a sign up sheet for when they release a beta. I held off on blogging this until we got the Channel...

I guess I didn't call it an obsession without reason, as I can't seem to keep away from those hyponotizing gradient animations. I modified the tool I posted last month so that it would output the XAML, such that a designer could actually use the tool and never touch a line of XAML. I set up the tool...

It was at PDC 2005 when The North Face showed a prototype of a WPF kiosk they were building. Well, with Vista and WPF having RTM'd, the real kiosk has been deployed, which you can read about from lead engineer Darren David at Fluid's blog . (Fluid is the agency that did the work for The North Face.)...

I started getting slightly obsessed/hypnotized with gradient animations and wanted a tool to see what I could do, so I built one. Basically, I just bound a bunch of sliders to the various transforms on the brush transform. I reused the infrastructure from an earlier post. As you watch the animation...

The Woodgrove Finance Application is a great demo of how WPF can be used to create better data visualization, in this case for financial data. I've posted the source code -- there are some good nuggets in here worth exploring. Click Here To Run It Using The Finance Application The application...

If you are a WPF developer, you must read Optimizing WPF Application Performance . It is chockful of tips, tricks and information about the inner workings of WPF. I've read it multiple times and I always learn something new. It is a glimse into the WPF source code, which you are building on top of whenever...

There is a very cool sample buried deeply in the SDK called Per Frame Animation that has some very clever and useful code in it. I recently was revisiting the sample and realized that there is a lot going on in the sample that may not at first be apparent. As such, I decided to isolate just the firework...

Mike Swanson, a hero already for his Illustrator to XAML converter, has posted a Thanksgiving gift: a SWF to XAML converter . I just interviewed him for Channel 9 , in which he shows some demos and spills the beans on how he did it.

So, if you haven't heard the news, .NET 3.0 shipped along with the SDK ! The Visual Studio Extensions aren't official yet, but they are looking better with every build. And, in addition, MIX07 has been announced. It wouldn't surprise me if it sold out. So, what better way to celebrate than checking...

The healthcare prototype source code, which we have demo'ed in one way or another many times, is now posted. It is a very compelling prototype as far as how a particular vertical -- healthcare -- could take advantage of WPF. Perhaps most interesting is its different techniques for doing data visualization...

Just recently came across the fact that some methods are hidden from intellisense through the use of the [System.ComponentModel.EditorBrowsable(System.ComponentModel.EditorBrowsableState.Never)] attribute. Two that are hidden are System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.CheckAccess() and System.Windows.Threading...

I was recently involved in some analysis of a WPF application which used 3D heavily that wasn't hitting its performance goals. The application was pegging the CPU and acted incredibly sluggish. What didn't make sense was that the CPU was getting pegged despite a video card with 256mb. Watching Tim Cahill...

Check out the page on the Yahoo .NET Developer Center that shows how to databind to the Yahoo Weather Service in XAML!

If you are following Vista, you are probably aware of the Sidebar, real estate on the desktop that can be used to host gadgets. And, if you are aware of Sidebar, you might be aware that the platform for gadgets is DHTML + Javascript. And, if you are a WPF designer/developer, you might be asking yourself...

AppDomains In doing some recent prototype work, the fact that WPF does not support multiple AppDomains came up. For most people, this is not an issue, but for certain scenarios, it causes some design challenges. The most common scenario for multiple AppDomains is when creating a plug-in model for...

I posted a build of the WPF Feature Montage that works with RC1. This is a great demo that walks through all the features of WPF in an amusing way, first delivered by Fil Fortes at MIX06 . He uses lots of clever techniques that are worth pilfering. Also very useful to show someone (like your boss) what...

If you haven't heard, all of the various pieces you need to do development on WPF are available now for RC1. A few things I wanted to chime in on: --If you haven't checked out the new Cider, do it! The XAML/Designer split view is worth downloading it alone. It is like XAMLPad but with intellisense...

Tim Sneath walked into my office the other day and laid Charles Petzold's Applications = Code + Markup on my desk. I'm only to Chapter 7 of 31 chapters and I am riveted . I already have that feeling when reading a great novel when you don't want it to end. It actually does read like a novel to me, with...

A tool called InvokeStress has just been posted up in the Developer Tools area on the wpf.netfx3.com site by a tester from the WPF team. This tool is amazing: it uses UIAutomation to randomly click any UIElement every three seconds. It is a great way to hammer your application to discover bugs and issues...

If you are doing development of browser-hosted .xbap WPF applications, there can be some confusion and delay when you want to clear out the cache. If you have the .NET SDK on the machine, you can run the mage program with the following switch: mage -cc I just learned a new trick for clearing the...