Ivo Manolov's Blog : XAML

WPF Application Quality Guide v0.5 Released!

ivom — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:58:00 GMT

I am happy to announce that we have released CTP 5 of the “WPF Application Quality Guide” – our single-stop document for WPF application and component developers and testers.

CTP 5 comes with the following new and updated content:

New content:
- “Considerations for WPF Browser Applications”
- “Integration and Scenario Testing”
- “XAML Editing Tools and Visual Studio Add-ins”
- “Building a WPF Application Test Suite by Using VSTS, NUnit, or xUnit”
Updated content:
- Reading roadmap
- “Performance and Scalability Testing”
- “TestApi”
- “Debugging Tools”
- “Performance Profiling Tools”
- “WPF Application Design and Development Tools”

The Guide is available here and here as a DOC file. Big kudos to Anne Gao on our team, who has been PM-ing all releases of the guide to date.

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Those of you who have been following the Guide have seen it evolve from its first CTP (link) of 20 or so pages to its present size of more than 80 pages.

Any 80-page document is tricky to grok, so we have been thinking of reorganizing the content and potentially splitting the content into two documents – one on client application development and testing fundamentals and one on WPF specifics. We prefer to do any edits based on user feedback, so please let us know of the current organization and content of the document and share your ideas on how we could improve both.

Jobs in the WPF Team

ivom — Wed, 21 May 2008 05:30:16 GMT

We (the WPF test team) are looking for several engineers, so I wanted to use the blog to point to the available positions in the team and give you a brief outline of the opportunities and responsibilities associated with each position.

Software Development Engineer in Test

(see official job posting)

As a SDET on the team you'll be responsible for ensuring the high quality of the WPF platform, by being the first and most critical customer of the platform, by being the first application developer using the new features introduced in WPF.

An accomplished SDET on our team is...

a world-class CS engineer;
an expert application developer, passionate about UI;
a feature expert, with deep knowledge of specific parts of the WPF stack (e.g. Controls, Application Model, Graphics, etc.);
fundamentals expert, with deep knowledge of software fundamentals such as security, performance & scalability, globalization/localization, accessibility, etc;
passionate about code quality, passionate and capable code and design reviewer;
striving on living on the absolute leading edge (and sometimes bleeding edge :) ) of the WPF technology;
a capable problem solver and having great sensitivity and zeal for discovering and fixing quality issues in the platform;
an effective team player.

We are currently looking for both junior and senior SDETs. You don't have to be all of the above in order to apply. You just have to be passionate, smart and willing to learn.

Software Architect

(see official job posting)

We are also looking for several software architects. Software architects are senior individual contributors with broad technical knowledge and experience, who are interested in having broad influence rather than being deep area experts.

A successful software architect on the team is:

an experienced software engineer with broad knowledge and appreciation of advanced software design and development techniques;
a passionate "code librarian", driving high code quality, as well as proper architectural layering, componentization and reuse across the organization;
a fundamentals champion and driver;
a technical leader and mentor;
an effective design and code reviewer;
very friendly and approachable. Willing to be randomized by folks asking for technical guidance and advice.

The Software Architects work closely with the managers and with other senior individual contributors on the team to form a coherent technical vision and strategy, matched with a pragmatic execution plan.

If you think you have what it takes to be successful in one of the best teams at Microsoft and you feel you are ready for a change, drop me a line. We offer working on the most advanced UI platform shipped by Microsoft to date, working alongside some of best and brightest engineering brains in the industry, a supportive and friendly team and practically limitless career growth opportunities.

WPF and XAML in 10 Minutes

ivom — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:47:51 GMT

A couple of our evangelists (Karsten and Jaime) published an excellent paper on WPF and XAML, which is probably the most dense publication on WPF I have seen to date. A great overview of the WPF-XAML tandem in 32 quick pages. Check it out here.