WPF, Silverlight and .NET Musings

Intro to TestApi - v0.3

wpftesting — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:11:00 GMT

Microsoft WPF team has released the TestApi v0.3 with various new additions and updates to the common testing API library. The new APIs and updates include:

Managed code fault injection API
Combinational variation generation API
New application control API
Visual verification additions
Acceptance tests
New samples
New namespace and binary naming
Updated documentation

The release can be downloaded from here as a zip file and don't forget to follow these steps to unblock the downloaded zip file before you unzip it.

The mastermind behind this initiative, Ivo Manolov, also has a series very good blog posts for more details about the new APIs:

Please send your feedback, comments, thoughts and suggestion to wpftbest@microsoft.com or post them at the TestApi forum. Thanks!

Introducing WPF Application Quality Guide v0.5!

wpftesting — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:16:00 GMT

WPF Application Quality Guide v0.5 has been released today at the WindowsClient.NET with new topics and updates! Please check out the headline at the Featured News section, view the guide online or download a word doc for viewing offline!

This release includes several new additions and updates:

1. Suggested Roadmap – updated to include new topics based on different persona

2. Performance and Scalability Testing – updated with a few new resources recommended by our WPF perf leads

3. Integration and Scenario Testing – a new article outlines the strategies and the steps to take in Integration and Scenario testing. Contributors: Nathan Anderson, Ranjesh Jaganathan, and Lester Lobo

4. TestApi (Tools) – updated with summary of the new APIs from TetsApi v0.2 as well as sample usages. Contributor: Ivo Manolov

5. Tools – various new additions and updates to commonly used tools. Contributor: Alexis Roosa

6. A1 Building a WPF Application Test Suite by Using VSTS, NUnit, or xUnit – a new article summarized the common unit testing frameworks including sample test code and key resources. Contributor: Ivo Manolov

7. A4 Considerations for WPF Browser Applications – a new valuable write-up with common considerations in XBap apps. Contributor: Matt Galbraith

Please take a moment to check out the Guide especially the new additions and updates, and let us know your thoughts. Got some ideas about making it more valuable to our customers? Thinking about contributing to the Guide? We would love to hear from you!

Introducing TestApi v0.2

wpftesting — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 03:32:00 GMT

WPF Test team just released the TestApi v.0.2! “TestApi” is a set of standalone libraries to enable WPF developers to test their applications and controls more effectively and efficiently. This latest release includes the following additions:

AutomatedApplication API for in- and out-of-process application control
New Visual Verification features
New Command-Line Parser features
xUnit and NUnit samples to complement Visual Studio unit testing samples

The ZIP package contains:

Binaries
Documentation (conceptual documents and API documentation)
Source Code
Samples

Please check it out! Send your feedback and your desired feature list to the team, who have been working diligently to deliver the features and looking forward to hearing from you! Thanks!

Finding Managed Memory Leaks in WPF and Silverlight applications

wpftesting — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 01:31:00 GMT

It's been a while since the last post was online. We have been very busy in working on one of the very fun and important features for our WPF 4 release, and I will post more details about the feature later.

While taking short breaks, I've noticed a few blog posts about finding managed memory leaks in WPF as well as Silverlight applications, some have very detailed steps for locating and debugging the memory leaks, some also introduced samples and tools, I found them quite useful and interesting:

Finding Memory Leaks in WPF-based applications - by WPF Performance team (our PM Jossef Goldberg). This post provided detailed steps in finding the leaks with sample apps, cause analysises and suggested fixes
Where's your leak at? [Using WinDbg, SOS, and GCRoot to diagnose a .NET memory leak] - by Silverlight dev David Anson, it has a few good links and a very interesting sample
Tracking down managed memory leaks (how to find a GC leak) - by Rico Mariani, it offers very detailed steps to follow in diagnosing memory leaks

Techniques and Tools:

SOS: finding the method bound to an EventHandler with WinDbg - by Mark Smith
WinDbg, a core part of the Debugging Tools for Windows
CLR Profiler for .NET Framework 2.0 and How To Use CLR Profiler

Other useful resources:

Simulating Weak Delegates for EventHandler-like Delegates - by Ian Griffiths
Simulating "Weak Delegates” in the CLR - by Greg Schechter
Updated WPFPerf Performance Profiling Tools for WPF - by WPF Performance team

WPF Application Quality Guide v0.4 Released!

wpftesting — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:06:00 GMT

WPF Application Quality Guide v0.4 has been released today at the WindowsClient.NET with new topics and updates! Check out the headline at the Featured News section, view the guide content online or download a word doc for viewing offline!

This release includes several new topics and updates:

1. Suggested Roadmap – updated to include new topics

2. Data-Driven Testing – a new article about the data-driven testing practice. Contributor: Ivo Manolov from Microsoft WPF Team

3. Globalization and Localization Testing – updated w/ more details including creating localizable UI layouts in WPF and approaches to localizing WPF applications. Contributor: Alik Khavin from Microsoft WPF Team

4. Stability and Stress Testing – a new article about stress testing principles, best practices, and useful resources. Contributor: Alexis Roosa from Microsoft WPF Team

5. Accessibility Testing – a new article about accessibility considerations, best practices and key resources. Contributors: Tim Cowley from Microsoft WPF Team, Masahiko Kaneko from Microsoft Windows, Anne Gao from Microsoft WPF Team

6. Tools / TestAPI – a brief intro about the newly released TestAPIs. Contributor: Ivo Manolov from Microsoft WPF Team

Please take a moment to check out the Guide especially the new content and updates, let us know any feedback and suggestions, helping us

to make this Guide better!

Happy Holidays!

TestApi v.0.1 Just Released!

wpftesting — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 04:23:00 GMT

I am very excited to introduce the TestApi v.0.1 to you - Microsoft WPF Test team has just released the v.0.1 version of the Test APIs! To find out the details and download the APIs source code, samples, and API documentation at http://codeplex.com/TestApi/.

TestApi is the API extension to the WPF Application Quality Guide, providing a set of documented, reusable APIs that enable developers and technical testers to write tests for their client applications.

TestApi v.0.1 provides the following APIs:

Visual Verification

Input Injection

UIA Helpers

WPF Dispatcher Helpers

Command-Line Parser

The package that we have released contains:

Binaries

Documentation – both high-level conceptual documents and MSDN-style API documentation

Source Code

Samples – a couple of VSTS samples

Ivo Manolov, the WPF Test Manager, who has been really hands-on in this release, from the vision to driving the overall design, coding, quality and the RTW release, you can also find more details on his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/ivo_manolov/.

The 8 Benefits of XAML for UI and Beyond

wpftesting — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:26:00 GMT

WPF team's PM Architect Rob Relyea wrote up a good post today summarizing the benefits of XAML for UI and beyond, including some new changes in XAML2009. Check it out here for more details.

WPF Sources for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

wpftesting — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:35:00 GMT

We've made the WPF sources for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 available today through download of Visual Studio 2008. Here is a list of available components:

List of available assemblies

NPWPF.dll	ReachFramework.dll
PenImc.dll	System.Printing.dll
PresentationBuildTasks.dll	System.Windows.Presentation.dll
PresentationCFFRasterizer.dll	UIAutomationClient.dll
PresentationCFFRasterizerNative_v0300.dll	UIAutomationClientsideProviders.dll
PresentationCore.dll	UIAutomationProvider.dll
PresentationFramework.Aero.dll	UIAutomationTypes.dll
PresentationFramework.Classic.dll	WindowsBase.dll
PresentationFramework.Luna.dll	WindowsFormsIntegration.dll
PresentationFramework.dll	wpfgfx_v0300.dll
PresentationFramework.Royale.dll	PresentationFontCache.exe
PresentationHostDll.dll	PresentationHost.exe
PresentationHostProxy.dll	XamlViewer_v0300.exe
PresentationNative_v0300.dll	XPSViewer.exe
PresentationUI.dll

To read more details about the release, how to get started, and where to report any issue, please take a look at the Reference Source Code Center Team Blog.

Introducing WPF Application Quality Guide v.0.3

wpftesting — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:29:00 GMT

WPF Application Quality Guide v0.3 has been released on 09/26/08 (last Friday) at the WindowsClient.NET! It is a guide that we hope upon completion can be a one-stop shop for guidance and best practices to improve product quality and testability of WPF applications and controls. Check out the headline at the Featured News section, view the guide content online or download a word doc to view offline!

This release includes 3 new content:

1. Suggested Roadmap – a thorough reading map for topics and articles based on different persona, including QAs, SDETs, App and Control Developers

2. Manual Testing and Record and Play – an article about the challenges in manual testing, good practices in writing manual tests, and guidelines for recording them for playback

3. Globalization and Localization Testing – summarized the high level concepts and provided useful resources with sample and more details to come in future releases

Please let us know your comments and feedback, we will be fine-tuning the content for future releases based on community's feedback. Thanks!

Resources for Control "Skinning" with VSM - VisualStateManager

wpftesting — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 06:17:00 GMT

VisualStateManager, a.k.a. VSM, I quote our WPF architect John Gossman's words from the architectural view:

VisualStateManager, by providing an abstraction of a VisualState, makes unifying the deskop and web models much more straightforward. While currently in Silverlight a VisualState contains a Storyboard, in the future it contain a group of Setters, just as in WPF. And while currently the user must call VisualStateManager.GoToState in code, in the future a GoToState action in the body of a Trigger will allow WPF style "codeless" templates to utiltize VisualStates and get the benefits of automatic transition generation and a more designer-friendly tooling experience. (details...)

Here are a few good resources about VSM:

Visual States in XAML Templates by WPF Architect John Gossman
VisualStateManager for desktop WPF again by John Gossman - in this blog, John introduced a solution project for prototyping only purposes, you can download the project source code for a desktop WPF implementation of VisualStateManager and a behavior system that allows existing WPF controls to work with it.
Creating Control Skins with Visual State Manager - An Introduction by Christian Schormann
Styles, Templates, and VisualStateManager by Jesse Liberty, Senior Program Manager on the .NET Developer Platform
Parts & States Model with VisualStateManager (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) by Karen Corby

More to come...

Transparent Windows in WPF

wpftesting — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 02:17:00 GMT

One of our development managers, Dwayne Need, just posted a blog about WPF layered window, it includes intro about layered windows in WPF, code snippents for using the feature, hittesting considerations, performance implications, and also talked about a few issues uncovered, for more details check it out at http://blogs.msdn.com/dwayneneed/archive/2008/09/08/transparent-windows-in-wpf.aspx.

Different Ways to Scroll Content in WPF Apps

wpftesting — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:57:00 GMT

We had a good thread today at the office about the content scrolling in WPF applications (controls, DataGrid, etc.), and one of our devs, Ben Carter, had a response that I thought is golden and would like to share with you:

Here are a variety of ways to scroll, perhaps one of these would fit the scenario you’re thinking of:

· The default – provide a ScrollViewer and let the end-user do the work.

· BringIntoView – Find a reference to an element and call BringIntoView() on it.

· ScrollIntoView – Some ItemsControls provide a way to specify the data item to bring into view since the element that corresponds to the data item might be virtualized, making BringIntoView not an option.

· ScrollViewer.LineUp, etc. – Find a reference to a ScrollViewer and call the desired scrolling method.

· Commands – Raise one of the ScrollBar routed commands (ScrollBar.LineUpCommand) on an element that is a child of the ScrollViewer. (should result in essentially the same as calling the method on ScrollViewer)

· ScrollBar.Value – Find a reference to a ScrollBar within a ScrollViewer and set the value property directly. (generally not recommended)

He summarized them really well, IMHO.

SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Fx 3.5 released!

wpftesting — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:49:00 GMT

Yes, Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Fx 3.5 has been released! Here are a few important links for your convenience:

· Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

· Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Readme

· Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack Preparation Tool

· Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (exe)

Please try them out, and let us know your feedback!

WPF DataGrid Preview & Control Investments in WPF 3.5 SP1!!!

wpftesting — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:41:00 GMT

WPF is proud to introduce the new DataGrid control and our control improvements for 3.5 SP1! In 3.5 SP1, the WPF Controls team invested heavily in improvements to our controls infrastructure to enable a performant, full-featured DataGrid in our next release. A CTP of our new DataGrid control is available on CodePlex.

The WPF team is excited to debut our new WPF DataGrid control! DataGrid is an essential feature for many applications and the WPF Controls team is working hard on developing a full-featured DataGrid equipped to meet our customers’ most common scenarios. To support the DataGrid initiative, in 3.5 SP1 WPF invested heavily in controls and data improvements to make our grid faster, more powerful, and more robust. These improvements included Item Container Recycling, Deferred Scrolling, Virtualization Extensions, MultiSelector, TreeView Virtualization, and more.

Read on for a preview of DataGrid features and an overview of the new controls and data features in 3.5 SP1 at "DataGrid Preview & Control Investments in WPF 3.5 SP1". Also remember to try out the DataGrid CTP on our new WPF Codeplex site!

Please let us know your feedback, and share your thoughts!

WPF Application Quality Guide v0.2

wpftesting — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:30:00 GMT

The WPF team has just released the WPF Application Quality Guide v0.2 today, here is an online version and here is a word doc with same content.

This release has an easy-to-navigate TOC structure, additional samples and content such as general testing concepts, test strategies, WPF programming stack, visual verification testing, media testing, animation and transition testing, performance and scalability testing, security testing, data binding and interop. It also provides a tools section where you can find the tools for creating, debugging, profiling and test WPF apps and components.

What do you think about the TOC structure and the content? Can you easily find the content you are looking for? Is there any topic that you would like to see in the future releases? Send us the feedback at wpftbest@microsoft.com or provide your comment below. Thanks!