Jaime Rodriguez : vs2008

cheat-sheet to some of the WPF 3.5 SP1 features..

jaimer — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:42:04 GMT

.NET 3.5 SP1 buzz peaked very early at the beta. At the time I was immersed in Silverlight, so I am now having to catch up; which is a bit of work since the release is packed with lots of new features. Below is my cheat sheet to date; I tried to group them on what I saw were the "core" investments.

The official release notes on 3.5 SP1 is at windowsclient.net/wpf.
Tim Sneath has a great post that puts the enhancements into context both on size ( # of changes) and on impact ( based on customer feedback ) .

Deployment

The Client profile SKU will be a very exciting offering soon. I will discuss it much more in a near-term post, but interim Troy Martez has a good document introducing the client profile.
Justin Van Patten has a great post detailing which assemblies are included in client profile
If you want to install it, the bootstrapper for it is at MS download center.

Performance:

Jossef Goldberg has a great blog post of the performance improvements in 3.5 SP1. Must read!!
There is a lot in there; and some are impressive and impactful (e.g. up to 40% cold-start improvement, container recycling, and virtualization on tree view).
Vincent Sibal explains container recycling. This feature feels small but makes a big difference on large lists.
Jossef also has a great example on using the new SplashScreen to improve perceived startup.
Rudi Grobler touches on Scrolling perf improvements
Jeremiah Morrill tries WriteableBitmap for video rendering. I am surprised i am not seeing WB for charting. I think that is a great scenario.

Graphics:

Adam Kinney interviewed David Teitlebaum around beta1 time-frame about the graphics improvements: hardware accelerated bitmap effects, D3DImage, WriteableBitmap, etc.
Greg Schecter has this great series on hardware accelerated bitmap effects.
Dr. WPF's tutorial on D3DImage is very comprehensive. This is a niche feature but it does enable a lot of scenarios where the previous solution [with airspace] was not ideal. BTW, happy blog-anniversary Dr. WPF!

AppModel:

Adam Kinney has a great interview with Jennifer Lee. I must say I am a bit surprised there is not more out there XBAPs. XBAP got a bad reputation at 3.0 launch because it did not work on Firefox, and at the time WCF required Full trust and XBAPs did not elevate. All of that has been fixed now, so I am excited about the improvements they did for XBAP in 3.5 SP1 (like the HTML splashscreen).
Lester's has a sample too on WebBrowser control [this is a very handy feature, compared to frame].

Tools/Other:

Adam recorded an interview with Mark Wilson Thomas and Erick Ellis.

Data:

Lester Lobo touches on StringFormat. This is so incredibly handy!!
Vincent Sibal on alternating rows in ItemsContainer.
Vincent Sibal has a great explanation on BindingGroup validation (which you can use to validate an object based on multiple bindings sharing a datacontext).
Vincent also has a couple posts on IEditableCollectionView, a feature that adds transactional support to editing items.
Write up on datagrid & control enhancements in 3.5 SP1

The list above is not all comprehensive, but it can help you catch up. Please let me know what I missed [I am sure there is lots of that]...

too much System.Runtime.InteropServices.ComException ?? :(

jaimer — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 03:05:00 GMT

Lately, I have been seeing System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException quite often when I launch Visual Studio 2008 to work on Silverlight projects..

Here is what I know causes the error..

Error happens when I have wrong templates installed (e.g. running old versions of the Silverlight tools for 1.1), in particular versions that were meant for VS 2008 beta2..
Workaround:

Uninstall the old tools,
install new tools
from an administrator command prompt, run
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE>devenv /REsetSkipPkgs

Error also happens when I am trying to open a "Web Application project" in Windows Vista and I have not launched Visual Studio with elevaged privileges..
Workaround:

Run VS with elevated privileges .... OR
Open project as a web site... ( File -> Open -> Website and navigate to directory)

There is one more scenario, but that one should not be happening to most people.. if you install a later or internal build of the VS tools for Silverlight... and then end up rolling back to old tools.

If you are seeing the error, my reccomendation is to at least try
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE>devenv /REsetSkipPkgs
That seems to help a lot of things..

Want to know which one gets me?? I forget to elevate, and I need Web App projects (instead of Open As website) because I need 'post-build steps' ...

Cheers,

Lotsa tools goodies released recently...

jaimer — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 09:15:42 GMT

Lots of tools released recently.. here are my lessons learned after not reading the manual :(

Expression Blend 2.0 December CTP was released last week..    I posted on Blend 2.0 before because the last CTP was full of new great features..
As far as I have seen from this 2.0 December CTP the big new feature is support for Visual Studio 2008 RTM {as well as a few bug minor fixes} ...
The one thing to note is that Blend 2 December Preview requires the .NET Framework 3.5 and creates solutions for VS 2008...    [not for VS2005] ..

A friend asked me if I would recommend installing 3.5 Framework on his box and Blend 2 (so he can build prototypes using Blend 2 and then cut & paste to his Blend 1.0 projects)? I have not tried running it side-by-side and I explained to him that there is implications of installing 3.5 on his box, this effectively upgrades your 3.0 framework so if you need to stick with a 3.0 framework for testing or debugging of existing apps -which was his case- I recommend using Blend2 on a VPC or a secondary box ... he is now happy getting the best of both worlds that way.

For those people that are developing .NET 3.0 applications, Expression Blend 1.0 SP1 was released last week too..
Unfortunately you don't see all the Blend 2 goodness in the Service pack. From the release notes, it seem the big feature is support for VS 2008 as well as bug fixes.. The big difference here is that Blend 1.0 SP1 does open VS 2008 and VS 2005 projects...
Another 'tools' update released last week was the ASP .NET 3.5 Extensions Preview.. ScottGu has the details on the extensions; though there is lots of goodies, to me the most exciting feature is the ASP .NET MVC implementation [which you can learn about via Scott's blog again] ..
The one thing to add [to my surprise] is that despite the similar name, the extensions are different from ASP .NET futures, so don't download it to get updates to the Managed JScript my guess is that updates to managed JScript will come when Microsoft releases the CTP for Silverlight 2.0. ..
A belated note on Expression Design SP1, which was released last month...
The complete release notes are here; and Joanna has a good description of the new features at the expression team's blog; her post is a must read because some of the features she lists were missing from the release notes but are very important ( like gradient mid-points can now be exported)..

That is it ... my machines are up-to-date on tools for now ... I hope this helps u decide what to download ..

VS Tip of the day blog...

jaimer — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 20:38:00 GMT

Am I the last one to find this really useful blog with lotsa good VS tips?

Try your VS knowledge on it.. How many of the tips did you know?? I knew about 60% ... but did not know of some really juicy ones (like swapping words via Ctrl-Shift-T .. .

if you go there and you knew every single tip let me know... that would be worthy of a prize -- like a T-shirt that said "I BSed jaime" ...

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..