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

Programmer Don't Like to Code

okoboji — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 07:13:30 GMT

Forgot what link brought me here, but I was quite impressed with the analysis.

...they like problem solving.

If programmers liked to code, we’d all be writing in machine language to this day. You can write that stuff all day and get precious little of the real problem solved.
If programmers liked to code, they wouldn’t value a language by its libraries. If programmers liked to code, every last one of us would be overjoyed to write our own HTTP client.

Interesting stuff...

Cleaning up your theme files with MergeDictionary

okoboji — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:40:00 GMT

Once you get the resources for more than one control in generic.xaml, things can get a bit messy.

What one really wants: split up your resources into separate dictionaries for each control.

I do this as part of the latest bag-o-tricks.

I should get Lauren or Ashish to fill in the details about the "source" semantics, since they are shared for all resources (images, fonts, etc) in WPF.

Open up the bag-o-tricks in VS (or the file system) and let's dig in.

First, you'll notice I've already split out the ColorPicker and DateControls into separate xaml files.

Let's do the Unload and Edit trick I showed yesterday.

You'll notice that these files, just like the other theme files (and all of the other XAML files in the solution) are defined as <Page/>. What does this mean?

Let's open our trusty Reflector to take a look.

If we build the project and drag-drop WPFSamplesLib.dll into Reflector, we can drill into the Resources. You'll notice that we have an entry for each XAML file in our project. Except instead of .xaml, we see .baml as a file extension. You'll also notice that the name for each entry in the resources maps to the full path for the xaml file we had in the project (the themes directory is included).

Rob goes into this a little bit on Channel9.

Going back to the project, let's reload the project and take a look at generic.xaml.

You'll notice this funky syntax for the Source of the ResourceDictionary. If we break it into chucks, it makes sense.

WPFSamplesLib is the name of the assembly (but we strip out the .dll).
";component/" is magic. No...it basically tells the resource loader that we're digging into embedded resources in the defined assembly.
The last bit is just a pointer to the entry in the assembly resources. You'll notice it matches the path we have in the project and the path you see in Reflector. Yes, there is a xaml/baml extension mismatch, but this is intentional. We try to hide devs from having to think about XAML vs. BAML. BAML is just the XAML content in an optimized, binary form.

This trick also works from code, in fact, using our trusty Reflector we can see this syntax for resources is the same syntax used by the compiler in initialize components for our application. (We're looking at WPFSamplesApp.exe, this time.)

Make sense?

This post is brought to you by our friends at Paint .NET and Reflector. Paint .NET and Reflector are the first two apps I install on a clean machine. Both available freely. Both examples of .NET 2.0 WinForms hotness. (I'm being patient for the WPF versions of each.)

Have a good weekend, friends.

Hello from TechEd Boston (update to Bag-O-Tricks)

okoboji — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 00:38:00 GMT

Having a blast in Boston. The city is beautiful.

Coolest things I’ve seen today: Exchange 2007. Scary hot. You must go learn about it now. Holy cow.

If you’re at TechEd, my talk is tomorrow at 1pm. Dev338. 157ABC. The slides are now on MSTechEd (you need to use a TechEd password to access them. Search for Speaker="Kevin Moore").

For everyone, I’ve posted an update to the Bag-O-Tricks for Beta2. No new features, but I fixed some bugs from the upgrade (the last update was for the Feb CTP). It’s hosted on the WPF community portal. Lots of cool stuff there. Check it out.

Books on WPF

okoboji — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 00:43:00 GMT

Mehrdad is looking for some WPF books.

I know of two:

...and of course, Chris Anderson is busy working on his book.

I expect that once Beta2 hits the road, we'll see a lot more books on WPF and WinFX.

I can't wait for Beta2...much cool stuff to show off.

Do you subclass ItemsControl? Keep reading.

okoboji — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 04:37:00 GMT

ItemsControl has a protected virtual GetContainerForItemOverride that takes an object parameter.

In all in-box WPF controls, this parameter is ignored and a cookie-cutter container is returned.

While it’s currently possible for control authors to change the container they return depending on the object provided, we’ve never seen this done.

We have an opportunity to optimize the behavior of ItemsControl under a few circumstances, but only if we can assume the container returned from GetContainerForItemOverride is constant for any ItemsControl.

The WPF team is entertaining changing this method to have no parameters to allow for this optimization. Before we make such a change, though, we want to make sure there are no real-world applications of this parameter that we’d be eliminating (especially this late in our product cycle.)

If you could please let us know if you are using this parameter, how you’re using it, and the inconvenience caused by its removal, we would greatly appreciate it.

Please provide feedback by replying to this post or sending me a note.

Thanks.

TreeListView - Scary Cool Control Mash-up in WPF

okoboji — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 21:00:00 GMT

As promised, the ATC team has posted another ListView sample. This sample is amazing because it doesn’t involve ListView at all. Instead, it uses the primitives we designed for ListView--namely GridViewColumn and GridViewRowPresenter. The code required here is amazingly small for the flexibility of the end experience.

The lessons here are important for control authors:

Build your controls the right way and you’ll drastically increase their flexibility and reuse. (We didn’t design GridViewRowPresenter for a TreeView, but it just happens to work because of the inherently compositional nature of WPF.)
Don’t start from scratch when you build a control. It’s easy to remix the pieces we provide in the platform to enable unique and valuable experiences.

WPF ListView Rocks!

okoboji — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 05:04:00 GMT

No control in our library demonstrates the power of WPF more than ListView. It is the example of how element composition can be leveraged to make amazingly beautiful and amazingly flexible experiences.

Check out the inaugural post from our friends in the Advanced Technology Center in Beijing. I've had the pleasure of working with this group of brilliant engineers for over a year now. They've just started blogging. Keep looking for more ListView samples in the near future. They have some stuff that'll blow you away.

Updated Bag-O-Tricks for WinFX Februrary CTP

okoboji — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 23:36:00 GMT

In case you haven't heard, the WinFX February CTP has been released. If you haven't downloaded it yet, what are you waiting for! Go! Get it! Now!

Alright, as is the custom, I've posted a new and improved drop of my Bag-O-Tricks.

In this release:

TreeView Double-click - Lot's of people seem to want to know when a TreeView/ListBox Item has been double/triple clicked. Here's how you do it.
Visual Tree Viewer - Ever want to know what elements are actually getting created by a template? Here's a novel way to debug your WPF app...using WPF!
TreeMapPanel - I posted this sample last year around the PDC. Here's the refresh for February CTP. (Actually, I didn't have to touch the code at all.)
NumericUpDown Control - One of the controls we don't have in the box, but everyone asks about. It's not completely done, but it should give people a good start if they want the control.
File organization - I've also created a second assembly in the Bag-O-Tricks for the controls. This demonstrates how to have styles in an external library plus their default templates.

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.