David Boschmans Weblog : WPF

Link dump: User Experience, Web Platform, Office System and more

David Boschmans — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 17:47:36 GMT

Here are some interesting links that I found while catching up on blogs:

User Experience:

Your Britain in pictures: BBC + Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth: The BBC is collaborating with Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth to create three- dimensional representations of some of the most dramatic buildings in Britain by combining hundreds of different photographs. Sit back and enjoy a virtual tour of some of Britain's most striking buildings.
Bart has a list of Microsoft Virtual Earth updates for Belgium
Rebuilding Microsoft Outlook with WPF: This Hands-On Lab will take you to the next level of Windows user interface development. Through the power of WPF (.NET 3.0, Blend and Visual Studio 2005) you will be able to build a replica of the Outlook 2007 UI in a couple of hours.
2x Brad Abrams: a) Introducing Acropolis on .NET Rocks! #248 and b) Brad on Silverlight in Tom's PodLeaders podcast
Lynda.com are now offering free Expression training which can be downloaded without a login [Via Ed Dunhill]:

Web Platform

Silverlight with JavaScript tutorials from wynapse.com: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06
A sample for Controlling Page Flow with Workflow Foundation from Matthew Winkler.
New ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Release [via ScottGu]

Office System

Maarten has a compilation of OpenXML News. Also, a good read to stay up to date with the latest developments in the OpenXML space.
Productivity from Microsoft at Work:
- Audiocast: Top 10 tips for Microsoft Office Excel 2007 - Be more productive when working on spreadsheets by using tips in this 60-minute podcast.
- Audiocast: Top 10 tips for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 - Create better presentations by using tips in this 60-minute podcast.
- Audiocast: Top 10 tips for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 - Get tips on how to better manage your e-mail in this 60-minute podcast.
Microsoft SDK for Open XML Formats: strongly typed part classes for use with Open XML documents

Security

Windows Vista - 6 Month Vulnerability Report

Windows Server

Windows Home Server goes RC - Sign up via Microsoft Connect
Windows Server 2008: some general information & webcasts and a set of links for developers & it pro's

Sample App

.NET StockTrader Sample Application: An End-to-End Sample Application Illustrating Windows Communication Foundation and .NET Enterprise Technologies

Technorati tags: User Experience, Expression, WPF, Acropolis, Silverlight, ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, Office, Open XML, Security, Windows Server 2008

WindowsClient.NET Community Site Launches

David Boschmans — Sat, 12 May 2007 13:25:23 GMT

WindowsClient.net, the community learning resource for Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation is now availabla at http://windowsclient.net/.

This site focuses on all aspects of rich client development on Windows using the .NET Framework. New content from both the Microsoft product teams and from the community will be added regularly to highlight the many user experience and developer productivity benefits of rich client applications on Windows.

Technorati tags: WindowsClient.net, WPF, .NET Framework

Family.Show: a new WPF reference sample

David Boschmans — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 16:57:10 GMT

Tim Sneath posted the first end-to-end reference sample on his blog. The Family.Show application - developed by Vertigo Software - is a genealogy explorer that allows you to create or import a family tree and explore, annotate or save it to XPS.

A couple of weeks ago I had installed a early internal build of the Family.Show application and at that time I was already very much impressed about the usability and the combination of features and design of this application. By now, it only became better!

Tim highlights some of the features in his blog post. Have a look here.

The good news is that the source code of this application is released with the quality level of a reference application. The goal here is to show best practices for the construction of an application and to try and include as much reusable code as possible that others can use both to understand the framework and to "borrow" for a real application.

Beside the source code there's also a what we learned session on the Vertigo site where the development team shares some lessons learned:

Check out our brief list of WPF and Expression Blend tips
Read detailed notes

Wondering how this all works?
Watch a five minute video of Family.Show in action, recorded by Scott Stanfield. If you will be at Mix07 in Vegas the next couple of days you might want to check out Scott Stanfield's session on the project:

"Family.Show": I See Dead People, with Windows Presentation Foundation

When: Tuesday, May 1 11:45 AM - 1:00 PM, Delfino 4005
Speaker: Scott Stanfield - Vertigo
Audiences: Designer, Developer
For a hobby that revolves around dead people, genealogy is remarkably popular: it's the fastest-growing scene in North America. And a perfect study for Vertigo's next Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) reference application for Microsoft. Our designers employed every trick in the WPF book (styles, resources, templates, data binding, animation, transforms) to present an innovative visualization of the classic family tree, freeing our developers to concentrate on behind-the-scenes features like XPS, printing, PInvoke wrapper for Windows Vista common dialogs, and Click-Once for WPF. See all of this with hands-on demos and our top-10 list of stuff to know about WPF and Microsoft Expression Blend. And, unlike the real-world case studies, you get the source code.

Technorati tags: WPF reference application, Windows Vista, WPF, MIX07

Building better Web Experiences: from ASP.NET AJAX to WPF/e

David Boschmans — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 01:13:48 GMT

This afternoon I did a workshop on Microsoft's Web Platform & Tools for LBi. I think it went really well, despite the amount of topics the cover and the time constraints. I started to discuss the importance of building better online experiences and how these influence business opportunities. Next we took a dive into the different web technologies.

From the technology side I started with covering ASP.NET AJAX. As most of the developers where already familiar with ASP.NET AJAX and even had some hands-on experience we could almost immediately dive into some examples. I showed some of examples of the AJAX Library, the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions and the AJAX Control Toolkit. While preparing my demos I had to update some of them to the latest bits. This migration guide (RC to RTM) were of great help to get them to work.

Some sample sites build using ASP.NET AJAX can be found here. I showed PageFlakes and ... the audience was impressed.

Next we had a look at the Windows Presentation Foundation as one of the elements of the .NET Framework 3.0 Framework for building desktop and (Windows) web applications. After looking at the architecture the coding and compilation/XAML parsing model I showed some demos from this list. I also showed how designer and developers can work better together using the XAML collaboration model to design user interfaces. Most developers where impressed when they saw how this worked: creating a XAML based UI in Expression Blend beta 2 - saving the project - opening it in Visual Studio 2005 + Cider - adding some code - etc. In a couple of weeks I'll be visiting the designers of LBi!

Moving from WPF to WPF/E was a little step but it remains difficult to explain the differences. Hopefully we'll soon get rid of the confusing codename (WPF/E). I hope the final name won't get any link to WPF ... Main difference is that WPF/E is cross-platform & cross-browser where WPF only runs on Windows because it requires the .NET 3.0 runtime. WPF/E doesn't need the .NET 3.0 runtime but a lightweight browser plug-in that will be made freely available. It's currently in February CTP status.

Some examples using WPF/E can be found here. I also showed the WPF/E SDK and the Visual Studio template that comes with it. The programming model even lets you integrate ASP.NET AJAX and WPF/E applications very easy. More on developing WPF/e applications using the SDK can be found on the WPF/E quickstart page.

Finally I explained how Windows Live gadgets and Windows Vista Sidebar gadgets can embrace the technologies above to extend the reach of connected applications. Karsten and Charles have some examples of a Vista gadget using WPF. I don't have an example yet of WPF/E in a Windows Vista Sidebar gadget, but I'll have a look at it in the upcoming weeks.

These are the technologies I covered during the workshop. Of course if time would have permitted I could have talked about creating Media Center experiences using MCML. A deeper look at the Expression Tools is definitely something that not only designers should do but also developers. Till today - and the availability of the March CTP of Visual Studio "Orcas" - Cider is just not sufficient for exploring XAML in Visual Studio. And yes, the development experience of WPF/E will only get better when getting closer to a beta stage.

If you want to experience all of this live, you can at Developer & IT-Pro Days 2007. During the web developer pre-conference all (except WPF) will be covered by Jeff Prosise.

Technorati tags: ASP.NET 2.0, ASP.NET AJAX, WPF, .NET Fx 3.0, WPF/E, Windows Vista Sidebar gadgets, Windows Live Gadgets

Nice list of demo-able WPF applications

David Boschmans — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:56:18 GMT

At Designertopia a couple of weeks ago I had some informal talks with people from McCann-Erickson on how the web might evolve in the next couple of years. I told them a little bit about the upcoming Microsoft platform technologies and how this can create new opportunities to reach people.

Today I delivered a presentation about this at McCann-Erickson. I explained why user-experience is so important these days. I started with some ASP.NET AJAX samples and then showed a lot of demos based on the Windows Presentation Foundation. While I had most applications installed locally on my demo box, this published list of WPF apps below helped me a lot, to show the power of the deployment models.

Here is the list of some public WPF applications that you can download or play with today. Note that the deployment model has been added so that you know what you are getting into as far as installation goes. Lots are using ClickOnce application files and .xbaps, so installation is trivial!

Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista - New IM client (SCREENCAST).
New York Times Reader - Next-generation online reading experience for the NY Times (MSI).
Microsoft Calendar Printing Assistant - Generate printed calendars from your Outlook schedule (MSI).
Microsoft Expression Blend - Designer tool for building WPF experiences (MSI).
Microsoft Expression Design - illustration and graphic design tool (MSI).
Microsoft Windows Live for TV - 3D access to Messenger contacts from Media Center or IE (MSI).
Electric Rain Standout - High-end custom presentation software (SCREENCAST).
Wikipedia Explorer - 3D exploration of related articles from Wikipedia (APPLICATION).
iBloks - Mashup application for creating 3D movies (MSI).
RikReader - RSS Reader that integrates with Internet Explorer 7 (APPLICATION).
Nostalgia - Yahoo! Flickr browser and photo manager (APPLICATION).
Cine.View - Netflix movie queue manager (APPLICATION).
Cool Text Vector Draw - A vector drawing program with 1200 fonts available via a web service (XBAP).
Actipro Wizard - A control for building wizard dialogs in WPF (XBAP).
UniveRSS - A 3D Vista RSS reader (APPLICATION).
Xceed Datagrid for WPF Live Explorer - Hands-on demo of Xceed's free new Datagrid for WPF (XBAP).
DominoKen - Artistic 3D XBAP demonstration from Microsoft Japan (XBAP).
Denounce - Stand-alone podcast listener and blog reader (APPLICATION).
British Library Turning the Pages - British Library's 'virtual viewer' for some of their most precious books (XBAP).
ITN Hub Player - Video clips and news stories from ITN (APPLICATION).
Evolution Media Center - HTPC Front-end with stunning animations and dynamic XAML-skinning (ZIP).
OTTO - Online clothing shopping (APPLICATION).
Metaliq - Snowboarding data visualization (ZIP).
WeatherNews - 3D Weather visualization (XBAP).
Shiseido - Make up online shopping (XBAP).
DOSV - Computer Configuration (XBAP).
Warner - Movie Previews and Showtimes (XBAP).
Notescraps - Random information manager (MSI).
Valil.Chess.WinFX - Chess game (XBAP, APPLICATION)
NetAdvantage for WPF - Infragistics NetAdvantage for WPF 2007 controls (APPLICATION).
fnac.com - French electronics retailer shopping experience - must set machine to French locale to run it (APPLICATION).

After having demo-ed some of these applications I went through some of the WPF/e applications, how they will be running cross-browser, cross-platform.

Here's a list of the "WPF/E" (codename) CTP (February 2007) SDK Samples (online):

Page Turn Media: The Page Turn sample shows how "WPF/E" uses XAML to create a compelling presentation of images. It also shows an additional navigation element that allows users to quickly jump to a specific image.
Media Library: This example uses a real world scenario of a video site. The sample is rendering a progressive download video feed from Channel 9 and uses ASP.NET AJAX to improve the interaction parameters of this sample (watch how back button works). Notice how resize works as the underlying presentation player (XAML) is vector-based.
Sprawl Game: "WPF/E" is perfect for creating casual games. This sample shows a typical casual game. All the elements of this game were created using the Microsoft Expression suite.
Simple Video Playback: The simple video playback samples provide the essentials you need for showing video playback on your site. The minimalist control uses an efficient design that hides the control when it is not needed using subtle animations.
Film Strip Slideshow: Learn the value proposition of "WPF/E" while viewing a "WPF/E" sample. This example uses animation to implement a slide show style presentation.

You can also download these samples from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=515684FD-C8A0-4588-88C5-54CE224925E7&displaylang=en.

Finally I briefly touched on the Windows Media Center development capabilities and how this might become increasingly important with the convergence of the internet and television.

I think it was quite an eye-opener for most of the people that were there. Especially that none of them were deep tecnical. I hope they will be using these ideas when building new creative ideas!

Technorati tags: ASP.NET AJAX, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/e), demo applications

Scott Guthrie was in Belgium and an udpate on Designertopia in London

David Boschmans — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 17:55:33 GMT

While I'm currently in London, attending Designertopia, the VISUG/MSDN meeting with Scott Guthrie in Belgium was a success! 250+ attendees saw Scott deliver two excellent sessions on the newest ASP.NET technologies:

First Look at Visual Studio and ASP.NET “Orcas”
ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET AJAX Tips and Tricks

It was the first time Scott was in Belgium. Our VISUG-community appreciated it. Microsoft Belux appreciated it. And therefore I want to thank Scott, Hans Verbeeck (for the support) and last but not least, all of the attendees! I've also noticed that Jan blogged about the event and the question whether the UpdatePanel works in web parts.

UPDATE: Tom posted Scott's first video on his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/tommer/archive/2007/02/03/video-of-scott-guthrie-s-newest-presentation-first-look-at-visual-studio-orcas.aspx.

You are probably wondering how Designertopia is going, right?

The first day, yesterday started off with a keynote by Eric Zocher, General Manager Expression Tools. The keynote covered Microsofts approach towards designer and developers. Of course the Expression Tools were featured. Some news that I missed earlier this week - probably due to the Wow - were some new product releases of the Expressions Tools Suite:

Expression Design hit Beta 1
Expression Blend hit Beta 2

Both downloads are available from the Expression website. More info on these releases can be found on Robert's blog.

The keynote was filled with demos - that unfortunately - failed a couple of times. Some cool demos of ASP.NET AJAX, WPF, WPF/E and the Expression Tools were shown though. They gave a good overview what Microsoft technologies can and should be used, and in which scenario (on/off line) to create the richest user experience possible. Personally I was most impressed by Expression Media. This is due to the fact that I already played around with the other tools that are part of the Expression Suite. But the demos of Expression Media convinced me to give it a try soon.

Later on the day I was really impressed by the presentation on "Participatory Design" by the director of the Webby Awards. The Steel-Software Blog has an excellent wrap-up of day 1 where the "Participatory Design" session details are covered. The session showed how user participation can (Doritos) or cannot (Chevy) work.

In the evening we had dinner with all the Belgian agencies that attended Designertopia. It was the first time that Geert and myself brought these people together at a Microsoft event, but it turned out very well. Thanks to all of you for joining us!

Technorati tags: Scott Guthrie, ASP.NET Orcas, ASP.NET AJAX, VISUG, Designertopia, Expression Tools