Jaime Rodriguez : cider designer

List of features to track in WPF4 and the details on beta1

jaimer — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:51:00 GMT

I am late to this but still wanted to share an “insider view” into the status of “WPF 4” in the recently released .NET Framework 4 and VS 2010 beta1.

Status of the run-time (on the public beta 1).
The WPF team cranked hard until last minute on 3.5 SP1 so they have been playing catch-up to .NET 4 and VS2010. The beta does not really do justice to the progress the team is making towards RTM. In a few cases, the team ‘compromised’ not shipping the feature in beta1 to optimize for the RTM schedule (preparing a beta does take integration work and testing, plus they had to put the longer/harder features up-front to decrease ship risks).
Beta2 appears to be in good shape for you to preview and share feedback still before .NET 4 RTMs.

For those looking into beta1, I would say the two areas where we need feedback will be:

The new XAML stuff (in particular we want to make sure we do not break you)
The tools ( Cider designer); I would love to hear what people think of the new features.

Want to learn more about beta1. Here is a bit of the action:

Video Interview with Ian Ellison Taylor WPF and Silverlight GM, and Kevin Gjerstad, WPF Group Program Manager. It pretty much discusses what is in and out (for beta1 and RTM).
Rob Relyea recorded a video on the XAML enhancements. This is a must watch and then follow it with this post and any other recent posts in Rob’s blog.
Jossef Goldberg has a great post on client profile in .NET4. We recorded a video, to be posted in the next few days; look for it here via update to this post, or in the continuum show.
Tomorrow we are shooting the Touch video; ironically they reached feature complete in beta2 today, maybe we can get a peek; video should be posted early next week.
[If you want to know why I am posting today instead of next week, we are doing LOB Tour in NY this weekend, so I am out on the road again. I hope you understand, post will be updated as we go]
WindowsClient.net now has a new section for the Cider designer. Karl Shifflett and the Cider crew will be putting videos there as they go. For starters, Mark Wilson-Thomas has a good “Lap Around Cider in beta1 .

On the way to .NET 4.
Here is my view into the new features I am tracking and current (best guess) estimate on timelines. The list is not all inclusive, so let me know if I missed one you cared about. note that this list focuses on new stuff; I did not include all the bug fixes and minor improvements to existing stuff.

Huge WARNING!! None of the below features are guaranteed. Nothing is official until we RTM.
Please do not make assumptions or plans based on this list.

Category	Feature	In beta 1	Expected by beta 2
Windows 7 light-up
	Multi-Touch	Basic manipulation and inertia. Raw touch events are not in.	Yes. Beta1 + Raw touch. A few tiny breaking changes.
	Taskbar integration	Not in beta 1	Yes
	Vista + Win7 Native Dialogs	Yes	Same as beta1
	Ribbon (though it is not win7 specific at all).	Not in beta 1	Ribbon will be shipping out of band still. Next preview ships after beta2. It will RTM by .NET 4 RTM or earlier.
Graphics& Text
	Text enhancements	Not in beta 1	Yes
	Cached Composition	Not in beta1	Yes
	Support for Pixel Shaders written w/ HLSL 3.0	Not in beta 1	Yes
	Caret customization	Not in beta 1	Yes
	ClearTypeHint	Yes	Same as beta1
	Legacy effects get cut	Yes. Old legacy Bitmapeffects are a no-op, unless it is one of the effects that are hardware accelerated.	Same as beta1
Fundamentals & AppModel
	XAML 2009	Beta1	Yes, minor changes.
	LayoutRounding	Not in beta1	Yes
	Bindable Run	Not in beta1	Yes
	Visual State Manager	Not in beta1.	In by beta2, now shipping in the framework.
	Animation Easing functions	Yes	Same as beta 1
	Datagrid	Yes. Moved from toolkit to framework. Minor bug fixes.	Same as beta 1.
	DatePicker	Move from toolkit to framework. Minor fixes.	Same as beta1.
	Full Trust XBAP	Not in beta1	Yes
	Databinding improvements	Not in beta1.	Yes
Deployment
	Client Profile	New client profile is in, but no web bootstrapper. Still needs to be compressed (for size).	Yes, full functionality.
	Client Profile Configurator	No. Will ship out of band.	No. Will ship out of band.
Tools
	VS2010 Cider	Cider has a lot of improvements. Perf work is not done.	Yes.
	VS2010 new Editor	Since the text enhancements are not in the run-time, the editor does not get them.	Yes.

Note: At PDC, we said that DeepZoom would be in WPF4. Unfortunately that feature has been cut. We just could not squeeze it into the schedule. There are workarounds to it: you can host Silverlight inWPF using web browser control or using the Silverlight hosting APIs.

Details on the features:
Below are high level descriptions around the features listed above. Must share that Ted Hu created the descriptions for a different document and I am shamelessly plagiarizing it. Thanks Ted.

Multi-touch
Windows 7 is introducing multi-touch input and manipulation processing, which Windows Presentation Foundation exposes. Multiple finger input will be exposed through existing and new input events, while new manipulation and inertia events will be exposed for developers to consume.

Multi-touch Manipulation and Inertia (Pan, Zoom, Rotate) events on UIElement
Raw Multi-touch events (Up, Move, Down) on UIElement, UIElement3D and ContentElement
Multiple capture supporting multiple active controls
ScrollViewer enhancement to support multi-touch pannning
Touch device extensibility
Future Surface SDK compatibility

Windows 7 Shell Integration
WPF 4 exposes several new Windows 7 Shell features to WPF developers These Shell features empower application authors to provide a richer, integrated user experience. The new taskbar is less cluttered and can convey more information at a glance. The Aero thumbnails support user commands. Jump lists provide access to contextual startup tasks and files available to the application.
WPF 4 will integrate Windows 7 JumpList functionality, including:

Tasks
Items
Recent and Frequent Lists integration
Custom Categories

Taskbar integration including:

Progress bar
Overlay Icon
Thumbnail buttons with commanding support
Description Text
DWM Thumbnail clipping

Text enhancements
WPF 4.0 Beta 2 introduces a new text rendering stack which allows for much clearer text rendering. This change adds the necessary knobs to allow WPF text to look virtually indistinguishable from Windows’ traditional GDI-rendered text. The clarity improvements also dramatically improve readability for many East Asian languages.

ClearType hint
ClearTypeHint allows app authors to enable cleartype when rendering text to IntermediateRenderTargets, where it would normally be disabled by the system. The system normally disables cleartype on IRTs because Cleartype only works properly when it’s rendered to an opaque surface, and it’s extremely difficult for the system to determine if an IRT will be rendered with transparency. By Setting this to true, you’re basically letting the system know that the IRT is transparent. This means you can now enable cleartype with layered windows, in Visual/Drawing brushes, in Effects, and in 3D if you so desired it.

Full-Trust XBAP
Starting in WPF 4.0, the ClickOnce elevation prompt is enabled for XAML Browser Applications (XBAPs) in Intranet and Trusted Zones, making it easier to deploy full-trust XBAPs. For XBAPs that require security permissions greater than the minimum code access security (CAS) permission grantset of the Intranet and Trusted Zones, the user will be able to click 'Run' on the ClickOnce elevation prompt when they navigate to the XBAP to allow the XBAP to run with the requested permissions.

LayoutRounding
WPF 4.0 will adopt the LayoutRounding property, originally introduced in Silverlight2. WPF’s layout engine frequently calculates sub-pixel positioning coordinates. This can lead to rendering artifacts as elements positioned on sub-pixel boundaries are antialiased over multiple physical pixels. LayoutRounding will force the layout engine to place elements on whole pixel boundaries, thus removing most of the rendering artifacts caused by this problem.

Bindable Run
The Run class has had a simple CLR property Text since the first release of the framework. In WPF 4.0 we have backed Run.Text with a dependency property. Among the many benefits of being a DP, Run.Text now supports data binding. One-way binding (from data source to Run.Text) is fully supported, and two-way binding is supported as long as the Run is not modified via the Text OM or from a RichTextBox.

Selection and caret customization
Simple app customization is a great WPF strength. In the past, the selection color and caret color for text input and reading controls (TextBox, RichTextBox, FlowDocumentReader, etc...) has been hard coded. WPF 4.0 will introduce the SelectionBrush and CaretBrush properties. These properties will allow developers to control the brush used to draw both selection and carets in many WPF controls.

Animation Easing functions
Is the exact same functions we announced in Silverlight 3; I can not tell you who created them first; funny how schedules work; but really nice to have compatibility.

BindingExpressionBase.ValidateWithoutUpdate does for a single binding expression what BindingGroup.ValidateWithoutUpdate does for a binding group – namely it starts the validate/update process but stops just before writing a value back to the source item

When BindingGroup.SharesProposedValues is true, the binding group will keep track of proposed values even when the UI elements that hold them are replaced. This supports a UI design pattern used by DataGrid (for example), where only one source property is presented with an “editing template” (containing editable controls – TextBox) while the other properties are presented with “display templates” (containing non-editable controls – TextBlock). As the user focuses a new property, its display template is replaced by an editing template, while the previously focused property’s editing template is replaced by a display template. The BindingGroup now manages the proposed value (if any) held by the old editing template, so that it can be displayed (if possible) in the display template and written back to the source when the user commits the binding group

LayoutRounding
Speaks for the feature already in Silverlight, where the layout system rounds any non-integral values at the time of a layout pass. This helps prevent the sub-pixel anti-aliasing effects that people describe as "blurriness"

"The New iteration" a paper on designer/developer collaboration using XAML...

jaimer — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:40:00 GMT

Karl (of mole fame) emails me about "The new iteration" article that Karsten and I wrote a while ago...

The paper attempts to do a lot in a few pages:

Introduce XAML ( in the context of HTML, SVG and the likes) for those not familiar with WPF.
Introduce the workflow you can get when developers and designers create UI using XAML: You get a common language that stream lines collaboration between these two roles. This reduces duplicate work and allows each role to use tools optimized for their specific tasks ( Blend for designers, VS 2008 for developers)..
Provide high level advise on roles and skills when you collaborate to this extent..
Share a few of our lessons learned from many WPF early adopter projects..
Provide tactical advise for those who already took the journey to WPF and XAML..

Please do send us your feedback .. there were a lot of topics we know we did not get to, I am hoping I can tackle some of these via blog posts or screencasts..

Going back to my old notes on every thing we did not get to I had:
Controls, Styles, Templates FAQ
Tips & Tricks on Blend.. way Beyond this very old article..
Tips & tricks on Blend + Cider, way beyond this intro old intro stuff..
Expression Designer (there was a lot we just did not get into)
Tips & trickcs on creating data-driven apps..( I guess this overlaps w/ tips & tricks above)..

What else do you want to hear about?? Let us know; I am keeping a list and even if I move really, really slow... I will eventually get to it..

Cider part3: Design-time extensibility.

jaimer — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 09:33:00 GMT

We have walked through the cider features, we have discussed its integration with Blend and the sweet spots for each tool ... to most users that is plenty, but there is a side to Cider that eventhough you might not see a lot is very important for the ecosystem and our long-term vision for Rapid development of WPF apps: the design-time extensibility.

By example, extensibility refers to:

Providing hooks (or APIs) so you can check if your code is running inside the designer -- for example at design-time, you might not have access to data that your app expects.. or at design-time you might want your controls to not animate or play video as soon as they are loaded (when at run-time you might want that)..
Support for licensing ( so control vendors can sell you a control that makes your life easier)
Support for custom property editors ( say you bought that control from a 3rd party), making it as easy as possible to set the right properties so the control is configured for run-time is obviously a goal of the tool vendor or framework vendor..

For this part, I don't have a screencast or a write-up because Jim Nakashima recently posted his TechEd session on Designer Extensibility .... Every thing you need (or more than I know) is covered there and I can't say it any better so let's give him the floor ..

Jim also posted his code samples for the session .

------

This closes the Cider series.. Let me know if I missed some thing that was important to you.

Cider Part2: building a WPF app using Cider and Expression Blend..

jaimer — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 09:25:00 GMT

In my earlier post I walked through my favorite Cider beta2 features.

You might have noticed that I focused on 'developer' features like laying out controls, wiring up events, and XAML editing. I skipped other 'designer' tasks (like styling, templating, animation, etc.) that you would need to create a stunning app .
The reason I skipped them is because the features required for these tasks are not in Cider v1; you can definitely implement all of these tasks by just typing XAML in the XAML editor, but that is not the highly productive RAD approach you get out of Expression Blend, so my reccomendation is that you use Blend for this.

Here is what I consider the sweet spots for each tool (based on my experience, this is not the official opinions from either team ):

Cider: Layout, Hooking Events and code-behind, XAML editing, Debugging, Deployment, version control integration from IDE.
Expression Blend: Layout, templating ( both controls and data ), Animations, Triggers, basic 3D Viewport manipulation ( camera, rotations, etc.), basic vector/path drawing (arguably better done in Expression Graphic design), and wysiwyg transformations..

So, to build an amazing wpf app with out compromising productivity and maximizing ease of you, you will have to use both tools.. If your immediate reaction was "argh, two tools!" I reacted that way at first, but having done it for last few weeks, I got a little bit less irritated... here are some of my personal takes/experiences/predictions around this subject:

There is no hidden agenda behind current state; this is simply the result of "only so much time, must prioritize features " .. rest assured all our teams are looking to provide best integration and as many features as possible across each tool... so you should expect the 'sweet spots' for each tool will grow and the tools willl overlap more and more in future releases.
On more overlap, we should acknowledge that it is nice and definitely a goal to keep the tools optimized for roles; VS2008 will continue to optimize for developers, and Blend will continue to optimize and target designers.
Another thing to highlight is that the teams have done all the leg work for seamless integration: they share projects, they share solutions, they share xaml files, they share as much design-time extensibility as possible given they shipped at different times, etc.
A non-technical argument is cost; this is out of my realm so no roadmap there but I do know that:

Expression Blend is included in MSDN so a large number of developers will get it for free ( if you are a developer who does not subscribe to MSDN you should look into that, it can likely save you $$).
If you are a designer, then you should know there are free versions of Visual Studio (called Express) that you can use to complement Blend ( e.g. for debugging).

I am clearly not in marketing so likely a better way to show you the seamless integration between the tools is to walk through a brief screencast as I did in part 1. Here is a 10 min screencast showing (briefly, not in full) how you can change a few templates and triggers in the 'bare browser' we created in part 1.

A screencast on what's new on WPF Designer "Cider" beta2...

jaimer — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 09:19:00 GMT

A belated follow-up to an earlier post about Cider... Will try for a brief series that discusses:

What's new in Beta2 ... ( lotsa new features, check details below )
How to build a WPF app using Cider AND Blend ... ( sweet spots for each tool, brief demo of the workflow) ..
Cider extensibility and features for control hosting, design-time, etc..

The 'features' screencast is available from Channel 9. It is ~10 mins of features + 10 mins building sample app..
Some of the new features in the screencast you should watch out for:

IDE/project stuff:

Templates for WPF apps (no more extensions)
Remembers my preferences on how to always open a XAML file; if I choose Design Surface or XAML editor it remembers (per file-per-project)
User control support
Property windows, categories, etc.
Wiring up events from the designer ... One click :)

Layout

Grid support with adorners
Panels ( StackPanel, DockPanel, etc.)
Snaplines
Guideline adorners for alignment

Navigation

Selection Sync ( Designer, editor, property window are always in sync.. )
Document Outline

Visual Preview

XAML Editor

Reflection based intellisense ... (yes, that means non-schema based)
Intellisense for mapping xml namespaces
Sync selection from within the editor
Better perf than previous build..
Navigate to event handler

Please check the screencast, and let me know if I missed some thing you like.. If there is some thing you don't like, provide feedback...

VS2008 Cider beta2 .. feedback wanted ..

jaimer — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 02:43:00 GMT

Today I spent two hours in Cider beta2..
I was not sure what to expect, I must admit in the past I had just disabled it cause I did not enjoy waiting for the "whoops" page..

Here is my first [raw,unedited, un-sugar-coded] impression...

The parser definitely surprised me.. A lot of my customer projects from the Vista launch opened in beta2... [a few that did not need DesignTime tweaks, same than they did in Blend]
I enjoyed the intellisense against my own controls... (as opposed to old schema/hacky based intellisense)..
I was not as impressed with the perf... Our team will have to improve on that (don't worry, they are on it)
Overall the drag & drop into design surface felt good.. much more useful than in beta1... but I have been doing so much Blend over past year that VS felt it could use some small polishing... that one you will have to submit as feedback, they won't take my word for it, they know how I dress :(

So why the post if it is not all perfect?? Because the time for feedback is now!! If you have projects that the parser can't handle, let the cider team know .. Here is the proposal/offer ...
If for what ever reason you don't want to download the VPC or the VS2008 DVD, drop me an email w/ your shipping address and I will ship you a DVD with a VPC -- offer limited to first 50 projects, maybe more pending your patience and your project size --...

I will come back to Cider with a more detailed review next week... but wanted to encourage you all to try it and provide the feedback...

VS2008 (Orcas) beta2 ...

jaimer — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 02:08:00 GMT

I often skip the "xyz" has shipped announcements.. but VS2008 "orcas" beta2 is packed with so much goodness that I had to jump in to vouch for it..

Check out Soma/ScottGu's video on beta2 http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=329443...

Start downloading beta2 while you watch the video, cause by the end no chance you will not be interested in playing with it..

I am getting late into it cause I was on vacation last two weeks but here is what I see so far:

The uninstall of beta1 and install of beta2 was surprisingly smooth for me.. that is a first..
I am quite interested in testing -- and hearing feedback from customers - on the WPF progress.. ( animation improvements & the features to host add-ins, in particular).. You can read about some of the WPF improvements from tim's blog or the WPF SDK team's blog..
On Web development, ScottGu has the skinny on this post..

My experiences:

I have been enjoying the much improved Javascript debugging since beta1 ...
I have also been using Expression Web due to the imho much better CSS support.. so it will be nice to see that goodness inside VS..

Today I spent two hours inside Cider beta2.. You can read about the beta2 Cider features from their wiki.. Immediately after this post, I will share some of my experience/expectations.. Sorry for 'dupe' post.. but I am guessing half of you won't read this far into a VS2008 post...

Still here? What r u waiting for.. Please go download it and have lots of fun... do file bugs when you find them..