Kathy Kam : Acropolis

Return from Tech Ed

KathyKam — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:45:00 GMT

Hello all,

It's been two months since I last posted. I have been kept pretty busy during this time. I spoke at Tech Ed Australia, Tech Ed NZ, and Tech Ed South East Asia. When I got back, I got piles of email to get back to!

I want to thank everyone who attended my session. It's been a real learning experience for me. Visiting each of the Tech Eds around the world has been most educational, speaking is only half of my duties there. The other half is getting to meet each and everyone of you. I find speaking with my customers one on one during "Ask the Expert" session and individually scheduled meetings were useful. I have taken all your feedback back to Redmond and continue to use it to drive requirements here. Thank you for taking your time to talk to me. I truly enjoyed meeting everyone. It's amazing the energy in technology we have out there! :)

Oh... and here is the deck I used: http://kkam.members.winisp.net/deck/Acropolis_teched07_kam.pptx

Let me know if you have any questions!

Acropolis August CTP (VS 2008 Beta2 Refresh) Release available now

KathyKam — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 05:49:00 GMT

Since VS 2008 Beta2 RTWed, I have gotten quite a few customers asking when we'll be refreshing "Acropolis" to work with VS 2008 Beta2. Today, I am VERY happy to annouce that "Acropolis" August CTP (aka VS 2008 Beta2 Refresh) is available! :)

This release is mainly an update so that our customers can continue to evaluate “Acropolis” with the latest VS 2008 Beta. In addition to VS 2008 Beta2 support, we have also added one small feature named “FloatingLayoutPane”. We have gotten feedback from our customers and in our forum that basic functionality like showing a floating window is too hard in the July CTP. Please let us know what you think.

Please note, the Acropolis August CTP depends on VS 2008 Beta2, it will not work with VS 2008 Beta1.

Download the bits:

- Acropolis CTP & Documentation

- Acropolis Samples for August CTP

The links will also be posted on http://windowsclient.net/Acropolis soon.

A special thank to David Poll, Acropolis' PM intern this summer, who help spec and drive Acropolis August CTP. Thanks David!

"Acropolis" meet the team on Channel 9

KathyKam — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 01:45:00 GMT

Is this the Acropolis video week or what? All the videos our team has done with Virtual TechEd, Channel 9 and so forth are all being posted. I swear.. this was totally not planned. I actually have no control over when these videos get posted.

Check it out:

http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=332664

Let me know what you think

Acropolis on Virtual TechEd

KathyKam — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 09:30:00 GMT

Come see me interview David Hill and Scott Morrison on Acropolis here. As the community PM, I interview David and Scott on some of the most frequently asked questions about the "Acropolis" project. This was my first real experience in being an "interviewer". I had a lot of fun doing it. Let me know what yout think! :)

http://www.virtualteched.com/pages/videos.aspx

Welcome to Acropolis

Members from the Acropolis Team—Kathy Kam, David Hill, and Scott Morrison—explain the hype behind this new technology. What is Acropolis? It’s a set of components and tools that make it easier for you to build modular, business-focused applications on the .NET framework, and is part of the “.NET Client Futures” wave of releases, Microsoft’s preview of upcoming technologies for Windows client development. Blog Acropolis here.

P.S. To those of you downunder, I am writing this blog at TechEd AU in the Gold Coast Convention Center. If you are interested in talking about Acropolis, swing by the "Ask the Expert" session on Wednesday or simply stop me at teh exhibition hall. (Though I'll probably be spending a lot of time at the speaker room - Room #5)

New Acropolis videos...

KathyKam — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 06:41:00 GMT

The Acropolis Tech Ed presentation are now available on http://windowsclient.net/Acropolis ! Let me know what you think.

I also recorded a new video named "How do I use Layout Panes" as part of the "How do I..." series on WindowsClient.Net. My intern David Poll recorded a new video "How do I use Views" that is available now as well.

"Acropolis" July CTP Available now!

KathyKam — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 23:42:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce that Acropolis July CTP release is now available for download at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=44977885-86B5-4AA0-9F20-DB365BFB9D10&displaylang=en

Features available in Acropolis July CTP includes:
- Transition Animation improvements – You can now add transition when changing page in TabLayoutPanes!
- Better Design Time support
- Better Custom Theming support
- Various bug fixing driven from community feedback

This release includes many fixes that the community has requested and we are looking forward for more feedback from all of you. Let me know what you think!

Acropolis on .NET Rocks!

KathyKam — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 18:40:00 GMT

Come listen to the interview Richard and Carl from .Net Rocks did with me, David and Nathan during TechEd! :)

http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=248

It was alot of fun talking to Richard and Carl. They were great. We covered topics from why is our project named "Acropolis" to many facinating details of the project.

Let me know what you think! :)

Secret Themes in "Acropolis"

KathyKam — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 11:00:00 GMT

I am going to start blogging on http://blogs.msdn.com/Acropolis as soon as TechEd is over and I can dedicate time to post detail code samples and description of our features. For my loyal readers on this blog, I will share with you some of the "not as publized" features we have hidden in the product.

So, in my this post... I want to share with you ... yes SECRET themes available in "Acropolis"!

As soon as you start an Acropolis Project, you will see our application wizard.

If you take a look at the choices in themes... ok what choices you might be thinking. :) Well, in our effort to ship CTP1, only one theme really passed the quality bar. So we decided to not allow selection to the other themes. However, we did not rip the other themes out of the product and you can actually still get to it and I will show you how.

1) In Application.XAML

2) You can change the theme by setting a new string on the "Theme" attribute to "Microsoft Acropolis Sepia Theme" or "Windows Classic Theme":
<AcropolisApplication ....
Theme="Microsoft Acropolis Theme"

Remember, use at your own risk. These themes are incomplete at best. But I am sharing this with you because it shows the direction we are heading. In future CTPs, we hope to generate a Vista Theme, XP theme, and may even have a selection of themes. We want to bring the "PowerPoint" experience of themeing your deck to your application! Apart from the themes we ship, you can actually write your own theme and be able to access it the same way. We will be posting how to do this in the Acropolis blog!

Does any of you prefer the look of these secret themes? Let me know what you think. Personally, I think the default theme we choose was the best. Love to hear what you think!

Acropolis vs SCSF/CAB FAQ

KathyKam — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:34:00 GMT

Glenn Block from the Patterns and Practices team (the guys who made CAB) blogged about some common asked questions relating to Acropolis and their project.

Check it out here: http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock/archive/2007/06/06/acropolis-the-future-of-smart-client.aspx

Here is a quick snippet of the most common question asked:

What happens to SCSF when Acropolis ships? Will p&p still support it?

With the announcement of Acropolis, we currently have no further plans for SCSF releases. That being said, our customers should rest assured that we are not dropping support for SCSF. We will continue to support the forums, provide fixes and assist customers in their implementations. Additionally the newly launched SCSFContrib project is an ongoing community effort to extend CAB/SCSF which will continue. We will continue to look at ways to help customers build smart client applications including providing pure WPF guidance as well as guidance for building Acropolis applications.

I have an existing SCSF / CAB applicaiton, will you help me migrate to Acropolis?

Another yes. We will be working with David Hill and the Acropolis team to create a migration path for existing CAB/SCSF customers. This will include looking at hosting existing CAB components in Acropolis as well as prescriptive guidance. We are committed to helping our customers make this transiton.

Introduction to Acropolis Layouts

KathyKam — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 11:00:00 GMT

Once you start an Acropolis applicaiton, you can see in the Acropolis Wizard, the fourth page allows you to select a "Layout" from the drop down box.

"What exactly am I selecting?" you might be thinking... so each of these selection correspond to an UI element that Acropolis provides. (All of which lives in the Microsoft.Acropolis.Windows namespace)

"Default Layout" aka PartPane

When you select this option, the Acropolis Wizard automatically generate this line of code in Window1.xaml if “Single Item” was chosen in the Navigation Page:

<Awx:PartPane Part="{Binding Part.NavigationManager.ActivePart}" Grid.Row="2"/>

A PartPane is an Acropolis UI object that hosts the selected the active UI (aka “View”) of the specified Acropolis Part. In the pre-generated code, we automatically set this to the only active component (since this is a single item navigation) of the application’s navigation model (aka NavigationManager).

This is a pretty basic control. It can only host one Acropolis Part and its View at a time. The interesting thing that this Acropolis control provides is its native understanding of Acropolis navigation model and on top of it, it contains many useful features. (That I will discuss in a separate and much more detail post J)

Note: If “Multiple Item” was chosen instead, the PartPane.Part property will not automatically be set, because it is not obvious which part the developer would like to host.

"Split Layout" aka SplitLayout

When you select this option, the Acropolis Wizard automatically generate this line of code in Window1.xaml if “Multiple Item” was chosen in the Navigation Page:

<Awx:SplitLayoutPane Parts="{Binding Part.NavigationManager.ActiveParts}" Grid.Row="2"/>

A SplitLayout is an Acropolis UI object that hosts the selected active UI (aka “View”) of all active Acropolis Part from the host part. In the pre-generated code, we automatically set the code up for the user, and the control is automatically linked to the application’s navigation model (aka NavigationManager)

This control is somewhat similar to the Windows Forms Panel control, except you can host more than 2 panels. It can be layout horizontally and vertically, and can switch with one property. (Now… try doing this in WPF with the grid control. J ) However, this control is based on WPF, and it hosts parts and the view you selected instead of just UI components. Ok.. maybe they are not that similar…. The goal of this control is to illustrate what Acropolis wants to provide. WPF is a highly flexible UI framework (and I personally love it), but we know sometimes “simple” things are not as easy to do. Acropolis wants to improve developer’s productivity by prepackaging common scenarios targeted for our line of business developers.

Note: If “Single Item” was chosen instead, the SplitLayout.Parts property will not automatically be set.

"Tabbed Layout" aka TabLayout

When you select this option, the Acropolis Wizard automatically generate this line of code in Window1.xaml if “Multiple Item” was chosen in the Navigation Page:

<Awx:TabLayoutPane Parts="{Binding Part.NavigationManager.ActiveParts}" Grid.Row="2"/>

A TabLayout is an Acropolis UI object that hosts the selected active UI (aka “View”) of all active Acropolis Part from the host part. In the pre-generated code, we automatically set the code up for the user, and the control is automatically linked to the application’s navigation model (aka NavigationManager).

There are actually a lot of cool features with the TabLayoutPane that I will start blogging about in coming weeks.

Note: If “Single Item” was chosen instead, the TabLayout.Parts property will not automatically be set.

"Acropolis" at TechEd Orlando 2007

KathyKam — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:00:00 GMT

I just want to let everyone know all the Code Name "Acropolis" related content at Tech Ed.

If you are in Orlando attending TechEd, please come and attend our session or meet the team at the TLC (Blue Area). We have a booth with all our latest demos!

Sessions:
DEV 302    David Hill   Windows .NET Client: Introducing the “Acropolis” Client Application Framework
DEV 318    Kathy Kam Windows .NET Client: Building Rich Client UI with the “Acropolis” Framework
DEV13-TLC David Hill / Kathy Kam Windows .NET Client: “Acropolis” Client Application Framework

Hands On Lab:
DEV16 "Acropolis" Lab - available at the North HOL area in the BLUE section

We love to hear your feedback on our product! Let us know in our forums:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1638&SiteID=1

Annoucing "Acropolis" for building composite client application!

KathyKam — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:00:00 GMT

After months of blogging silence, I am happy to be able to blog again.

As I have mentioned before, in the past 6 months, I have been working on an unannouced project. Today, I'm proud to annouce that the project is finally public for the world to use!

So what exactly is this project? "Acropolis" is a set of components and tools that enables you to build composite client application. Great client application has three main components. It has to be cheap to build, easy to manage and offers a high quality user experience. "Acropolis" plans to address all three areas. We plan on delivering a rich design-time toolset to help you compose the application beyond the UI. We have an architecture that enables developers to build their application in a composite manner making it easy to build. Finally, it offers prebuilt common components and services, that developers can use to deliver great user experiences in minimal cost and also makes the application easy to manage.

As the PM for the "User experience" pillar, I will blog more about our features around this area in coming days.

Download Acropolis from http://windowsclient.net/Acropolis and let me know what you think.