# Thursday, May 14, 2009

Choosing a UI technology is often very difficult. I've spoken to a great many developers who want to use one particular technology, but then second guess themselves. For example, they may want to build a client app, but have pressure from management to build a web or browser-based app, often with no clear technical reason. Or perhaps they want to update a Windows Forms app, and are wondering if they need to port it to WPF - and wondering how to do that.

In this interview (filmed at Tech Ed last year), Brian Noyes discusses all of this. He has some good rules of thumb and some advice grounded in his real world experience. Definitely a show to watch. On his blog, Brian summarizes some of his points. Worth a read also.

Kate

Thursday, May 14, 2009 1:45:58 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Daniel Kornev took a look at Code Pack and went back to the future, recreating some Longhorn WinFS demos from five years ago using Windows 7 technology. What old demos and prototypes can you find and make a modern-day reality?

Kate

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 11:35:41 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Sunday, May 10, 2009

I haven't put the RC on my laptop yet - too close to Tech Ed for me to mess with important stuff - but I liked this summary from Tim Sneath of what an RC means, and what you should be looking at as a developer. Make sure your application runs properly on Windows 7 to start with (and if it runs on Vista, it will almost certainly run on Windows 7), then look at adding goodies to it that take advantage of what the OS has to offer. He even includes a link to Code Pack. Check it out.

Kate

Sunday, May 10, 2009 8:23:38 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Friday, May 08, 2009

Some people have asked me about the purpose of Vista Bridge now that Code Pack (ok, Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework) exists. If you want to use a Vista feature (such as the power management API) you won't find them in Code Pack yet. Vista Bridge is not under active development right now, but you can download and use the wrappers to save time and effort whether you are targeting Windows 7 or Vista. If you run into issues using it on Windows 7, please let the team know using the Discussion tab.

The second question I am getting is about versions. Code Pack 0.8 (no longer available for download) was for build 7000. Code Pack 0.85 (the current version) is for the RC of Windows 7. If you have moved to the RC and something isn't working for you, go and get the latest version because there were a few breaking changes.

Will there be a new version for RTM? Let me just quote from the home page:

Please note that this library is currently a work-in-progress and this release is version 0.85 of this library. The final version of this library will be available around the time of the Windows 7 RTM release. Various features in the library could change between now and final release.

That's pretty transparent, I would say.

Update: 0.8 can still be downloaded. Go to the downloads page and there's a link over to the right.

Friday, May 08, 2009 8:05:40 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Wednesday, May 06, 2009

I've made another appearance on DotNetRocks with Carl and Richard. Some links from the show:

And of course, the show itself. I dare you to listen at 1.4 or double speed.

Kate

Wednesday, May 06, 2009 7:57:02 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Monday, May 04, 2009

Sometimes little things make a big difference. Say you're reading through some code in Visual Studio and you come across a class or function you don't immediately recognize. It's interfering with your reading of the code, right? So you copy the name into your clipboard buffer, flip out to a browser, probably with Alt-Tab, then click for a new tab, type a URL like www.live.com or www.codeproject.com, wait while the page loads, paste your buffer into the search box, click search ... wow there are a lot of opportunities to be distracted in that process.

The CodeProject has a simple add-in for Visual Studio that lets you do your searches without going anywhere. It does one thing, and does it well.

Give it a try!

Kate

Monday, May 04, 2009 7:48:16 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Saturday, May 02, 2009

If you're starting to get interested in WPF, why not check out some of the videos over at WindowsClient.net? You can learn how to make a splash screen, use a datagrid, add validation to your application, deploy using ClickOnce, and much much more. Each video is only 10 or 15 minutes, but there are about a hundred of them. You're sure to learn something!

Kate

Saturday, May 02, 2009 7:42:01 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    
# Thursday, April 30, 2009

Inspired by the side by side approach of the "eye candy" article I linked to, here are two apps to compare:

Yes, they're the same app. The difference is a theme - one of the ones I posted about a while ago. I had to make four changes to this application to get this theme applied. I started by copying the appropriate XAML and DLL files (in this case, ShinyBlue.xaml and System.Windows.Controls.Theming.ShinyBlue.dll) into the project folder. Then I added the XAML into the project, and added references to the dll and also to WpfToolkit:

This lets me use dynamic resources from the theme. This particular theme doesn't have a default background brush, so I edited the XAML for my window to use the background brush in the theme:

For everything except the background (the colour of the button, the checkbox, the foreground text colour for the label and so on), it's just a matter of adding the ResourceDictionary in App1.XAML:

The various controls look good together - that's the work of the theme. This is a pretty simple way to make a dramatic difference in your application. If you didn't look at WPF themes yet, you really should.

Kate

Thursday, April 30, 2009 7:37:36 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #