Gold Coast : WPF

EventToCommand + DataStateBehavior eases MVVM pain

marcsc — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:56:56 GMT

MVVM is a pattern. There are all sorts of MVVM frameworks popping up that help make implementing the pattern easier. If you select the MVVM tag off of www.codeplex.com, you will find a number of them:

http://www.codeplex.com/site/search?TagName=MVVM&ProjectSearchText=%22MVVM%22

One I have recently grown fond of is http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com/. The reason I like this one is because they have built an Expression Blend Behavior called EventToCommand. Details for the behavior:

http://blog.galasoft.ch/archive/2009/11/05/mvvm-light-toolkit-v3-alpha-2-eventtocommand-behavior.aspx

As the post says, ‘EventToCommand is used to bind an event to an ICommand directly in XAML.”

This is WAY COOL!!! EventToCommand helps overcome commanding challenges in Silverlight.

I love Blend Behaviors. If you haven’t looked into them, YOU MUST! Every WPF and Silverlight developer should be using them (where applicable). “A Behavior is in essence a reusable piece of interactivity that can be applied directly to user interface elements...”

Here are some resources:

Good Overview - http://tinyurl.com/BehaviorsOverview

More reading - http://tinyurl.com/BehaviorsTriggersActions

Expression Blend 3 SDK - http://tinyurl.com/blend3sdk

Lots of folks creating and uploading them to Expression Gallery - http://tinyurl.com/BehaviorsGallery

Behaviors from the Blend Team - http://expressionblend.codeplex.com/

Behaviors are part of the Blend SDK. There is a lot of confusion about the Blend SDK because people think you have to buy Blend to use it. You don’t! You can download it from http://tinyurl.com/blend3sdk and use it straight from Visual Studio. Blend definitely makes wiring up Behaviors easier so you should it for that if you are already using Blend!

The samples you can download from http://expressionblend.codeplex.com/ include DataStateBehavior and DataStateSwitchBehavior. Peter Blois has a good post on these behaviors:

http://blois.us/blog/2009/04/datatrigger-bindings-on-non.html

DataStateBehavior/DataStateSwitchBehavior provide a nice clean way to change values in your ViewModel that result in initiating animations in your View.

I’ve been wanting to whip up a simple sample that shows both EventToCommand and DataStateBehavior/DataStateSwitchBehavior. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time right now to do so. Instead of sitting on this, I decided to blog about it first, then share a sample/video when I get around to it.

Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch

marcsc — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:25:39 GMT

Robert Levy from the Surface team and Anson Tsao from the WPF team gave a great session on:

Multi-Touch on Microsoft Surface and Windows 7 for .NET Developers

The session is definitely worth watching if you are interested in building multi-touch apps on Windows 7. In the session, they announced the Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch which is a set of “Controls, samples, templates, and docs Coming shortly after the WPF4 launch.” Don’t let the Surface name fool you, the toolkit will work on any Windows 7 touch PC with the .NET Framework 4.0 installed.

This is exciting news that I have been keeping under wraps for quite some time. The toolkit will take Windows 7 multi-touch developer productivity for WPF4 developers to the next level. During the session, they shared that the toolkit will include:

Common controls optimized for Multi-Touch

Controls design primarily for Multi-Touch

Essential Multi-Touch UX Functionality

Hearing all of this is, of course, a bit of a tease since the controls won’t be available for a while, but exciting news nonetheless. The good news is that the Surface team also announced that the Surface SDK is no longer “by invitation only.” You can download it from http://surface.com/developer. Since the toolkit is a subset of existing Surface 1.0 SDK assets ported to WPF4, you can get a head start by evaluating the Surface 1.0 SDK. If your development cycle is far enough out, you might even want to consider building your app on the Surface 1.0 SDK and porting it to WPF4 / Windows 7 when the toolkit is available. Of course, you will have to stick to the subset that is being ported to WPF4, but your code will only need minimal changes (if any) to run on a Windows 7 PC once the toolkit is released.

Hidden gems in the gaming starter kit

marcsc — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:43:59 GMT

Yesterday I blogged about the SketchFlow starter kit and how great I thought it was. Well, last night, I went ahead and tried the Venture into Gaming with Behaviors in Expression Blend 3 starter kit from:

http://adamkinney.com/Blog/4-Expression-Studio-3-Starter-Kits-available-for-download

Much to my surprise, this felt more like a Blend 3 Fundamentals through Building a Game. To understand what I mean, here are the individual modules in the kit:

01_BLN03SP1EN720_Organizing_and Importing_Assets into_Expression_Blend

02_BLN03SP1EN720_Creating_the_Game_Interface_Using_Expression_Blend

03_BLN03SP1EN720_Understanding_Layout_Containers

04_BLN03SP1EN720_Creating_a_User_Control

05_BLN03SP1EN720_Adding_and_Applying_Behaviors

06_BLN03SP1EN720_Adding_Game_Walls_and_Creating_Animation

07_BLN03SP1EN720_Animating_Controls_with_the_Visual_State_Manager

08_BLN03SP1EN720_Working_with_Texts_and_Embeding_Fonts_with_Expression_Blend

09_BLN03SP1EN720_Adding_Audio_Resources_to_a_Silverlight_Game

10_BLN03SP1EN720_Publishing_and_Testing_Your_Silverlight_Game

If you are looking to warm up to Blend a bit more through a video walkthrough + hands-on-lab kind of approach, then I’d definitely recommend this kit. If you already understand these concepts, then you might want to skip this one. On the other hand, it is kind of fun to see how easy it is to build a simple game with the skills you already have.

The biggest nugget for me was the module on Behaviors. If you haven’t looked at Behaviors, then GO DO IT NOW. Here’s a good post on behaviors:

http://team.silverlight.net/announcements/product-feature-highlight-expression-blend-3-ndash-behaviors/

“A Behavior is in essence a reusable piece of interactivity that can be applied directly to user interface elements in Expression Blend.”

I don’t remember where, but I saw someone describe Behaviors as "ASP.NET AJAX Control Extenders for Silverlight/WPF." Not a bad way of describing them if you are familiar with the concept of ASP.NET AJAX Control Extenders.

Once you have wrapped your head around Behaviors, you’ll want to check out the following two links to download more:

http://gallery.expression.microsoft.com/en-us/site/search?f%5B0%5D.Type=Tag&f%5B0%5D.Value=Behavior

http://expressionblend.codeplex.com/

In general, http://gallery.expression.microsoft.com is a great resource. There are all sorts of useful things to download there including Art/Design assets, Web Templates, Samples, Themes, Behaviors, Code Snippets, Tools/Addins.

Prism Visual Studio Templates (including MVVM)

marcsc — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:19:18 GMT

Prism is:

“The Composite Client Application Guidance is designed to help you more easily build modular Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight client applications.”

What most people find, once they take the time to dig in to Prism, is that it is MUCH more. Prism has guidance on how to build an app that targets both Silverlight & WPF, has some plumbing that makes MVVM easier in Silverlight apps by providing a basic commanding implementation, etc. However, the learning curve to get proficient with Prism can be a turnoff for some. Even once you “get it,” you then realize that there is a fair amount of Visual Studio solution/project setup just to get to the point of being able to start building your parts of the application. The good news is that David Hill has just released some templates for Visual Studio 2008 to make the basic setup for your Prism based apps much easier:

http://blogs.msdn.com/dphill/archive/2009/05/29/prism-quick-start-kit.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/dphill/archive/2009/06/15/prism-quick-start-kit-update.aspx

I just went through the walkthrough in the first link. Here is what you get after the “Prism Shell” and “Prism Module” templates:

You get the skeleton of a basic composite application using MVVM. I think this is a big time saver. I will definitely be keeping an eye out as David evolves the templates / quick start kit.

UPDATE: I was so excited to share my discovery of David’s work that I forgot to add a few more helpful resources I have found:

Code Snippet for Prism DelegateCommand

A code snippet to quickly write Prism commands

WPF Chart Controls!!!

marcsc — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:42:29 GMT

YES! WPF officially has charting controls now:). There’s a new release of the WPF Toolkit:

WPF Toolkit - June 2009 Release

Bug fixes PLUS CHART CONTROLS!

Integrating Virtual Earth 3D into WPF and Surface Applications for Mere Mortals

marcsc — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:28:04 GMT

I just published a Channel 9 interview with Josh Wall and Josh Blake from InfoStrat about their Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Surface controls that make integrating Virtual Earth 3D a breeze. Check it out:

http://tinyurl.com/Ch9InfoStratVE

“Virtual Earth 3D has many applications, but until recently has only been practical on the web with a JavaScript interface. WPF applications could not use the full potential of Virtual Earth 3D without requiring a WPF wizard and some XAML magic due to Win32 interop limitations.

Information Strategies (InfoStrat) has the solution. They created a WPF / Surface control, InfoStrat.VE, and are sharing with the community on CodePlex. This control provides a WPF interface for the Virtual Earth 3D control, complete with data binding for camera control and WPF-based pushpins. All Win32 restrictions (air space control, no rotation or visual brush) are eliminated. Microsoft Surface is also supported.

Watch the interview to learn the history behind the control, see it in action, learn how to get started, and even contribute back to the community.”

UPDATE: Interested in learning about a pretty cool solution that uses InfoStrat.VE? Check out Sam Chenaur’s post:

John L Scott Real Estate Looks to WPF and Software + Services

MVVM Toolkit for WPF

marcsc — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:35:58 GMT

The Model View ViewModel pattern has become very popular for building WPF applications. Until now, there wasn’t much guidance/tooling from Microsoft to help you get started with MVVM. The WPF team just released an early preview of the MVVM Toolkit:

“The Model-View-ViewModel toolkit is intended to introduce the Model-View-ViewModel design pattern for building WPF applications to the broad WPF developer community.
The toolkit includes:

A Visual Studio 2008 template (Visual C# Express 2008 also supported)
Documentation
- General introduction to M-V-VM
- Walkthrough using the VS template
A complete WPF application demonstrating the M-V-VM pattern

You can download the toolkit on the WPF Futures page.”

I just installed it, went through the documentation/walkthrough. I’d definitely recommend taking a look at this!

I hope there is something like this in the works for Silverlight:).

InfoStrat.VE – Intermediate fix published for the latest 3D control

marcsc — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:44:28 GMT

Due to popular demand, InfoStrat just published an intermediate fix to get their InfoStrat.VE control working on top of the latest Virtual Earth 3D release. You will notice that they just made a changeset available. What they made available is not fully tested. Once it is, they will publish a new release in the Downloads tab. Here’s the post announcing the interim fix:

http://tinyurl.com/csxhnj

If you aren’t familiar with their control, then check out my blog post for a little background:

http://tinyurl.com/b3a5ps

This control is a must have for any WPF or Surface developer looking to get Virtual Earth 3D working optimally in their app.

InfoStrat releases a Virtual Earth control for both WPF and Surface to CodePlex

marcsc — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:34:12 GMT

I’ve been waiting for this day to happen for a LONG TIME. I’ve been working with WPF, Virtual Earth, and Surface for quite a while now. If you’ve followed my blog, you’ve seen some hacked up samples showing various ways of getting Virtual Earth integrated into a WPF application. I’ve been working with a number of customers and partners on Surface and WPF applications lately. Just about every one of them wants mapping capabilities in their Surface and WPF apps. That is not a surprise given that I focus on US Government customers.

A while back, I created a fairly trivial sample of how to integrated Virtual Earth into a Surface app. I’ve been sharing it as a starting point to get customers going. I met Josh Wall from InfoStrat through my good friend Russ Williams from the Microsoft Technology Center in Reston, Va. Russ and I had worked together on a few Surface opportunities. He told me about a conversation he had with Josh from InfoStrat. Josh was interested in the sample that I put together. We had a call to discuss some of the challenges around Virtual Earth / Surface integration and we shared the sample with Josh.

What happened next still amazes me. InfoStrat took the sample, completely rewrote it using a much better technical approach, and started building their own reusable VE WPF/Surface control. After seeing the amazing work that InfoStrat put into their control, I figured I would ask them if they would be willing to put it on CodePlex. Much to my surprise, they were very interested in the idea. They came up with a plan, and the end result is that today they have announced the first release of the control on CodePlex.

What does this mean to you? If you are a WPF or Surface developer looking to integrate Virtual Earth into your applications, then InfoStrat just saved you a heck of a lot of time and technical challenges. The fact that InfoStrat was willing to share their work with the community still blows my mind.

I’ll be doing a Channel 9 Inside Out interview with InfoStrat about the control soon. Stay tuned!

Here’s a description of the CodePlex project:

“Project Summary

This control provides a WPF interface for the Virtual Earth 3D control, complete with data binding for camera control and WPF-based pushpins. All Win32 restrictions (air space control, no rotation or visual brush) are eliminated. Microsoft Surface is also supported.

Project Details

Virtual Earth 3D has many applications, but until recently has only been practical on the web with a javascript interface. WPF applications could not use it to its full potential without requiring a WPF wizard and some XAML magic due to Win32 interop limitations.

The solution is here: InfoStrat.VE

Created by InfoStrat, this project provides a VEMap control for WPF and SurfaceVEMap control for Microsoft Surface. SurfaceVEMap derives from VEMap and adds multi-touch manipulation support.

For examples of Microsoft Surface solutions we've built with this control go to our InfoStrat Surface gallery.

InfoStrat.VE allows WPF and Microsoft Surface developers to take full advantage of Virtual Earth 3D with minimal overhead. Simply reference the dll, add a single VEMap control to your XAML, and you have a map! The control eliminates the Win32 Interop restrictions, so you can do everything with this VE control that you could do with any native WPF control, including:

Overlay items (no more transparent windows!)
Rotate and transform the map within the interface (no more boring rectangles, bring on the 360 degree interfaces!)
Use the map within a Visual Brush (you know you want faded reflections!)”

Josh Blake, the primary developer on the project, announced the publishing of the control here:

http://nui.joshland.org/2009/03/announcing-infostratve-virtual-earth-3d.html

What are you waiting for? Head over to the CodePlex page to learn more:

http://wpfvirtualearth.codeplex.com/

About InfoStrat:

Information Strategies ("InfoStrat") helps customers solve complex business problems with IT Consulting Services such as: Requirements Analysis, Software Architecture and Design, and Application Development Services. InfoStrat is an award-winning Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with Gold Certifications in eight Microsoft Competency Solutions Areas.

Founded in 1987, InfoStrat is one of the nation's foremost leaders in IT Services focused on Microsoft technologies. InfoStrat has provided IT Consulting Services on over 1000 customer projects. InfoStrat consultants hold over 150 Microsoft technical certifications and are experts in .NET application development focused primarily on:

News release about CodePlex project on infostrat.com:

http://infostrat.com/home/company_information/news_room/InfoStratVE.htm

InfoStrat’s Single View Platform landing page:

http://infostrat.com/home/solutions/Surface/SurfaceSVP.htm

PARTNER SHOWCASE: Northrop Grumman - Innovating for the War Fighter with Microsoft Surface

marcsc — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:32:34 GMT

I’ve been a Developer Evangelist for 3+ years now. For the first 3 years, I spent the majority of my time focusing on delivering public presentations at conferences, for webcasts/screencasts, onsite at customer facilities, and at local community events in DC area. This year, the focus of my role changed slightly. Although I still do my fair share of the previously mentioned activities, I am now on a team that focuses on Systems Integrators (SIs) and Partners who do work for the US Government. I’ve always been focused on US Government developers, but the scope of the people I interacted with was more broad. With my new role, I have had more of an opportunity to work with SIs and Partners on things like Proof of Concept (POC) applications.

Back in September/October, I had the pleasure of spending a few weeks with Northrop Grumman and the Microsoft Technology Center in Reston, Virginia to build a POC application on Microsoft Surface. After the completion of the POC, we recorded an interview and demo with the team responsible for creating the application. I just published that video. Here’s the description:

“Northrop Grumman partnered with the Microsoft Technology Center and the Microsoft US Public Sector Developer and Platform Evangelism team to build a Proof Of Concept (POC) application that would demonstrate how Microsoft Surface could enhance mission planning, rehearsal, and post mission knowledge collection for military command and control decision making. Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuilding and technical services to government and commercial customers worldwide.

Watch the interview to see a full demo of the POC. The interview highlights Northrop Grumman’s learning experiences on the POC especially with regard to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the Surface SDK, the designer/developer workflow enabled by WPF and the new thinking behind Natural User Interfaces with an emphasis on User experience.”

The interview is available at:

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Inside+Out/Northrop-Grumman-Innovating-for-the-War-Fighter-with-Microsoft-Surface/

One of the things I am trying to do in my new role is to start a “PARTNER SHOWCASE” series of posts to help highlight work like this that SIs and Partners are doing for US Government customers. Feel free to contact me if you fall into this category and you’re interested in showcasing your work on Channel 9!

XamlFest DC (March 4 and 5)

marcsc — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:54:38 GMT

Here’s a chance at some free WPF and Silverlight training. XamlFest is an event touring around the US enabling developers to ramp up their WPF/Silverlight skills quickly. Here is the description of the event:

“Are you excited about the WPF but concerned about the learning curve? Have you seen Silverlight but don’t know where to get started? Or are you curious about how tools like Visual Studio and Expression Blend help designers and developers work together to deliver great user experiences? If so, join us at XamlFest!

XamlFest is a two day interactive event where you’ll learn about the platforms the tools and processes used to deliver differentiated user experiences. It’s a chance for you to mingle with UX minded Microsoft folks as well as industry leading design integrators. It’s also an opportunity to pick up a free copy of Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio 2 for you attendance.

Each XamlFest day will start with interactive sessions by Microsoft and our design partners, followed by a free lunch and a chance to network, have some fun and win prizes. Each afternoon will be geared toward assisted development with instructor-led walkthroughs, or, better yet, come with your own project in mind and we’ll help kick start your very own proof of concept”

More details and registration information is available at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/archive/2009/02/16/you-re-invited-to-xamlfest-dc-march-4-5.aspx

Also note:

“We’re asking that each company send no more than 4 people to this event so that we accommodate as many as possible. We’re allowing only 40 attendees to ensure we deliver a good experience during the assisted development sessions.”

Looking for a list of Silverlight & WPF controls?

marcsc — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:40:20 GMT

How about a WPF app that is a live demo of all of them? Mike Taulty recently published a ClickOnce app that might tickle your fancy…

http://mtaulty.com/CommunityServer/blogs/mike_taultys_blog/archive/2009/02/03/silverlight-wpf-control-browser.aspx

I just installed it. PRETTY COOL!

Microsoft Surface GIS Apps by Infostrat

marcsc — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:02:59 GMT

I’ve been working with a number of partners lately on building Microsoft Surface apps. Infostrat is one of them. They have done some of the best Virtual Earth integration work I have seen so far. Have a look at this video that highlights their work:

Want to learn what Surface development is all about? Check out the recording of the PDC session:

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/PC17/

You’ll also want to keep up with the Surface blog. If you

http://blogs.msdn.com/surface/

Finally, contact me if you are doing US Government focused work and are interested in getting into Surface development.

Don’t miss the Designer Dinner next week

marcsc — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:27:02 GMT

Based on the success of our Developer Dinner series for US Public Sector Partners, James has been delivering Designer Dinners focusing on the design side of software development. James is the User Experience Evangelist on our team. He has a Designer Dinner scheduled for next week on Silverlight and WPF animation 101. The event is next Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 from 6-8pm EST.

James and I have been delivering the Developer and Designer Dinners independently so far, but we are working on having more synergy between the topics and schedules moving forward. You will definitely want to check out his Designer Dinner if you attended the Developer Dinner. James plans on using the application I built as a starting point.

You can find details for the event at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jameschi/archive/2008/12/28/designer-dinner-animation-101.aspx

DESIGNER DINNER: Expression Blend 2 deep dive

marcsc — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:14:04 GMT

Sorry for the late notice, but my teammate James is hosting a Designer Dinner on Expression Blend 2 this Wednesday. James is the new User Experience Evangelist (UXE) on our team. The Designer Dinners are much like the Developer Dinners my team has done for the last few years, except the content focuses on the user experience side of software development. I will publish announcements for the Designer Dinners under the same tag as the Developer Dinners on my team blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/publicsector/archive/tags/DevDinner/default.aspx

Just like the Developer Dinners, moving forward we going to try to record the Designer Dinners and make them available on demand:

http://blogs.msdn.com/publicsector/archive/2008/11/09/announcing-developer-dinner-on-demand.aspx

We haven’t quite gotten all the kinks out when it comes to recording these, but we’re working with the operations staff at the Reston office to make recording easier. For now, our “plan B” is to have the presenter wear a Bluetooth headset while they are presenting. Someone commented how annoying the headset was at our Public Sector Developer Conference in Reston, Virginia earlier this month. I completely understand, but it is the best we can do right now to get these recorded and made available to a broader audience. I’m hoping the updates to the audio system in Reston will be complete soon!

Here are the details for the dinner:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jameschi/archive/2008/12/15/designer-dinner-expression-blend-2-deep-dive.aspx