Okoboji: a lake, a mythical university, Kevin Moore's blog : Avalon

Coming to TechEd? I’ll be there!

okoboji — Tue, 23 May 2006 04:25:00 GMT

As Rob has already mentioned, I’m talking at TechEd.

I’m giving two talks.

Data Visualization in WPF (with help from Robby and Bea)
This is 6/13 from 2:45pm to 4pm.

Building Data-Driven Apps with WPF
This is my shot at Namita’s talk from the PDC. (She did an amazing job, so I have much to live up to.)
This talk: 6/15 from 1pm to 2:15pm.

Let me know if you’re coming and what you want to hear.

In the mean time, Robby and I are plotting some really cool stuff for the next public preview of WPF…golly, I hope it’s soon. :-)

Robby and Me on Channel 9

okoboji — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 06:20:00 GMT

We're not nearly as entertaining as Don and Chris, but Robby and I are in another video on Channel 9 (our last one was on MSDN TV). This time we talk about our experiences with Windows programming, the web and the power/flexibility/extensibility of WPF. It was a fun conversation.

Robby is giving a talk at MIX this year. His PDC talk [ZIP, 144MB] was amazing. (Only Robby could weave vegetable peelers and the power of design.) Sign up for Mix while you can!

In the video we talk about CSS Zen Garden and a couple of panels I've written: TreeMapPanel (haven't tested it on the Jan CTP) and Animating Tile Panel (the latest update is in my Bag-O-Tricks).

In other news...

okoboji — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 11:18:00 GMT

Our friends from Max have been busy.

Not only are they cranking away at a beautiful WinFX app, but they're taking time to blog about their adventures.

Ben has blogged about IScrollInfo [Part 1, Part 2, Part 3]. If you are making your own panel and want a ScrollViewer to party over it, start here.

Dan is blogging about creating a virtualized panel (for putting lots of data in a list). [Part 1, Part 2, Part 3]

If you haven't heard, IE7 is beautiful. One of my first blog posts was about Mozilla 1.5. About the same time the IE team was getting rolling again. They have done some amazing work. Check it out.

Today Bea, Namita, and I met with some folks from the VB team to chat about integrating their new language features with WPF data binding. Wow! I know there are some C# guys out there laughing at VB. Guys and gals: download the demo. You may soon forget your love of semicolons. Mmm...XML inline with code...*drool*. (Oh, and check out Bea's post on doing grouping with ItemsControl. Very cool.)

Have you been reading about InfoCard? You should be. Kim is your man. Check out his blog.

On a personal note, I've been having fun updating the Bag-O-Tricks for our next public release. I stayed up late on Valentines Day hacking away as a Valentines gift to you, my loyal readers. I've added some new things that I've been asked about. I've also put all of the controls in an external library which includes default styles. This is for control authors that want to ship a control with its template in a single library.

Also, the team that built the WPF ListView has a bunch of samples that they should be posting very soon. People have been asking about a TreeView with columns. Let's just say the power of WPF composition will blow you away.

Stay tuned.

MSDN TV: The Power of Templates in Windows Presentation Foundation

okoboji — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 03:41:00 GMT

Robert and I just got posted to MSDN TV. We do a talk on the Power of Templates in Windows Presentation Foundation.

If you want to look at my sample (the folder picker), just download my Bag-o-Tricks. It's one of the samples in there.

If you want to download Robby's sample, please be patient. He's at home taking care of a new baby. I think he's in the office next week.

Link to the video: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/episode.aspx?xml=episodes/en/20060202WPFKM/manifest.xml

Link to the transcript (because some people think I talk fast): http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/transcripts/20060202WPFKMTranscript.aspx

Read Bea's Blog

okoboji — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 05:22:00 GMT

I think at some point I mentioned I've moved over to work on Data Binding in WPF.

Binding is a thick, but powerful subject in WPF.

One of the testers on my team is blogging (and she's hiding outside MSDN blogs).

Beatriz is amazing to work with. Her blog is also very helpful.

Send her a message asking her to blog more about the fun that is data in WPF. Tell her Kevin said so.

(As soon as I get back from Whistler, I'll update the bag-o-tricks with MapPanel and ColorPicker.)

An update to the WinFX Bag-O-Tricks for the January CTP

okoboji — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 01:00:00 GMT

As you may already know, there aren't really any changes to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) in the January CTP. I have noticed some updates to the VS extensions for Visual Studio, so you may want to update your bits anyway.

I received a bunch of suggestions for samples, but nothing that really inspired me. One request of note: someone asked for a TextBox/RichTextBox that supports spell checking. Good news: this is already a planned feature that will be available in an upcoming CTP. Stay tuned.

I thought I would use the new CTP as an excuse to add a couple of samples to my Bag-O-Tricks.

InfoTextBox
Just a simple extension of TextBox. I love the use of subtle animations.

RadioButtonList
Where is the RadioButtonList? Right here! The power of control styles and templates.

Windows Live Messenger Beta Invite for WPF Sample Suggestion: wanna trade?

okoboji — Sat, 31 Dec 2005 02:45:00 GMT

I have one Messenger Beta invite to give out and I'm always looking for WPF sample suggestions. So...

I have no strict criteria. The first suggestion that makes me think "hmm, that looks interesting" wins. Tips: if it's trivially simple or insanely complicated, you probably won't get it. Take a look at the samples I've already posted as examples. I'd love to see an example of a useful control that isn't "in the box".

Send me the passport/messenger/hotmail address that you want to use. (This will be the *only* address you can sign-in to the beta with.)

I reserve the right to share all entries with people on my team or the public at large.

Use the Contact link, not comments (unless you want everyone in the world to know your email address.)

Winner will be notified via email. Everyone else: please don't send me a "did you pick someone yet?" email. I'll update this post when we have a winner.

A WinFX Bag-O-Tricks

okoboji — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 05:39:00 GMT

It's been pretty quiet around the office this week. I've had a chance to do some updating and clean-up on a bunch of samples that I've created over the last several months.

I've decided to roll up all of my samples into one application. This will make it much easier to roll changes forward as we make new releases of WinFX availible.

I have a few new tricks up my sleeve. Hopefully I'll get to those next week.

Hex
My second game.
Mine Sweeper
My first game.
XAML T-Shirt
This sample is super simple, but that's the point. It's just a styled HeaderedContentControl.
Animating Tile Panel
A cool demonstration of a custom Panel and CompositionTargets.Rendering
Folder Picker
Showing off DataTemplates, INotifyPropertyChanged, and lots of Binding.

A reason to download the December CTP: XAML preview (and basic editting) in Visual Studio

okoboji — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 00:37:00 GMT

Here's an early Christmas present: download the latest CTP of WinFX and the associated extensions to Visual Studio and you'll get basic XAML preview and editing in Visual Studio.

Happy Holidays!

WinFX Hex

okoboji — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 09:40:00 GMT

I discovered the game Hex when I spent a semester in Australia my senior year of college. Taking the things I learned building Minesweeper, I thought I'd see how far I could get with Hex. I'm pretty happy with the results. (As with my first post of Minesweeper, this is a work in progress.)

I had a lot of fun with DataTemplates and DataTriggers. I also made my first jump into storyboards. Fun stuff.

Hex_2005-12-05.zip [12.0KB]

Take a look at the description of Hex at Wikipedia.
Take a look at Hexy, a great (and very challenging) implementation of a Hex player.

Animating Tile Panel (an excuse to download the WinXP Nov CTP)

okoboji — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:03:00 GMT

I've been sitting on this demo a few weeks, so I'm excited to finally share the code publicly.

Go down the the WinFX Runtime Components - November CTP

The latest release includes a simple, static event: CompositionTarget.Rendering. This simple event will give you call every frame. What does this enable? Some sweet animated effects.

I basically took Dan's Tile Panel and updated it to use CompositionTarget.Rendering, private attached properties, and a little high school physics. The results are pretty cool.

Since it's just a Panel, you can put anything you want in it: Shapes, Controls, Images. Images look really cool.

WPF Minesweeper (updated)

okoboji — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 01:12:00 GMT

I've updated Minesweeper (see my last post). We have a timer, a "new game button" and cool graphics when you win/lose. (Alright, I just change the background brush, but it looks cool.) I still need to add options to change the size and number of mines. I also want to do high scores, etc. It's a work in progress.

WPF_Minesweeper_v0.8.zip [8.32 KB]

Mine Sweeper in WPF (Avalon)

okoboji — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 09:59:00 GMT

Every once in a while someone asks if they could build the next Quake in WPF. While WPF has some pretty cool 3D and animation support, it wasn’t designed for twitch games. DirectX is still your best bet there.

There are classes of games that are pretty easy to build in WPF, though.

On a whim, I decided to implement Mine Sweeper in WPF. This is still a work in progress. I hope to add an application model (menus, options, high score, win/lose animations) and get it working in partial trust in the near future. For now, have fun tweaking the styles.

FYI: Instead of using two-button click to auto-expose items, use the middle (wheel) mouse button.

PDC: demos, posters, pictures

okoboji — Sun, 18 Sep 2005 23:31:00 GMT

I got back yesterday from the PDC. It was a great trip. As promised, I’m posting the demo code for my talk.

This zip contains each stage of my ColorPicker demo:
0) A simple UserControl that uses standard CLR properties and INotifyPropertyChanged
1) A conversion of 0) to use DependencyProperty and Binding
2) A conversion of 1) to be a Control with a simple template
2.1-2.3) Examples of different custom templates.

Same control, different templates.

As I mentioned in my talk, make sure you check out the SDK for guidelines for building stylable controls and more information about external control libraries with embedded default styles (written by Robby and me respectively).

Robby and I had fun designing our team t-shirt and poster. If you're looking for a cool desktop (or if you want to print your own poster) I've included a big PNG and a PDF (I will have to work to post an XPS or my team will probably hunt me down.)

Here’s (most of) the team after the last presentation. We had a great time.

Custom Panel: TreeMapPanel

okoboji — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:03:00 GMT

TreeMaps have been all the rage. I figured it would be cool to see how easy it would be to build such a thing in WPF.

It turns out that getting started in pretty easy. There are a number of implementations of TreeMaps around. I found a Java one that looked like a good place to start. After a bunch of editing and debugging I had an algorithm that worked pretty well. The trick was fitting it into the Panel paradigm in WPF.

The model for Panels in WPF is attached properties. You drop in a bunch of children and then you assign Panel-specific properties. Canvas: Left and Top. Grid: Column and Row. DockPanel: Dock. Pretty simple.

For TreeMapPanel the obvious property to expose was Area. A TreeMap will lay out its children so that they fill the space and their respective areas stay proportionate. That's what I did with my panel. The only thing left was to throw some data at it. Similar to my FolderPicker demo, I created a data object to generate a directory and file structure.

NOTE: I hard-wired a path in Data.cs. Make sure you change it to a directory that actually exists on your computer. You may also want to pick a shallow directory (without many nested sub-directories.) My default style makes heavy use of Viewbox which gets expensive when they are nested.

Props to my friends at UMD for the starting spot. Make sure if you reuse my code you stay compliant with their original license.