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Welcome to Acropolis

A New Phase for the Acropolis Project 

The Acropolis incubation project has been a great learning experience for us and we have received a lot of great feedback that will keep us very busy for quite a while.

We are very excited to be entering the next phase of the project where we will begin to roll many of the Acropolis concepts into future versions of the .NET Framework for the desktop and Silverlight. Unfortunately, while we figure out exactly how to go about this, we have decided not to release any more Acropolis CTP's. We’re going to keep the current CTP bits available to allow you to continue prototyping and evaluating the Acropolis concepts. There will be no new functionality added to the Acropolis CTPs but we do hope that you will continue to provide feedback to us on what you like or don’t like.

We do have some good news though! We were pleasantly surprised to get feedback from many of you that you want to go live with Acropolis based solutions in the short term. To us that validated a lot of the thinking we have been doing and it is a positive indicator of the Acropolis approach. Because of this type of feedback, we want to help you continue to take advantage of the Acropolis concepts and the power of the .NET platform while we figure out the longer term plan.

We are very excited to announce that we are going to be working closely with the Microsoft Patterns & Practices team to provide guidance (samples, applications blocks, patterns and so on) for building composite client applications for .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008. As part of that effort we want to engage with those that have been following the Acropolis project to ensure that this guidance meets your needs. Glenn Block, the Patterns & Practices client product manager, has much more information about the Composite Applications for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 project here. (Click for his post.)

If you have evaluated Acropolis and are unsure whether to adopt it for your project, or to use the existing CAB, or to wait for the new guidance, our guidance for this situation remains the same – if you are building a Windows Forms LOB composite client (with maybe rich islands of WPF content) you should carefully evaluate the current CAB release. If you are specifically interesting in building composite applications on .NET 3.5, please get involved with the Patterns & Practices project and help us to deliver a guidance package that meets your requirements.

Thanks again for your feedback and expect to hear more in the next couple of months about our future plans.
 
The Acropolis Team

 

"How Do I?" with Acropolis

This video offers a brief overview of Acropolis features.

Author: David Hill

(12 minutes, 37 seconds)

How Do I Get Started With Acropolis?

Video Downloads:
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Audio Downloads:
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Sample Code:
VB | C#

Acropolis allows you to cleanly separate the visual and logical structures of your applications.  The Acropolis designer in Visual Studio helps you to modify and work with and modify the logical structure of your application separately from the visual structure, simplifying the task of creating Acropolis applications.  This presentation demonstrates how to use the Acropolis designer to compose Acropolis applications.

Author: David Poll

(8 minutes, 54 seconds)

How Do I Use The Acropolis Designer?

Video Downloads:
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Audio Downloads:
AAC | WMA | MPEG-4 | MPEG-3 | MPEG-2

Sample Code:
VB | C#

Acropolis Views allow you to create user interfaces for interacting with your parts. In this presentation we demonstrate how to create a new view in WPF for an existing part, and then to wire up that view to the part's connection points. You'll see how Acropolis allows you to cleanly specify your UI separate from the business logic behind it.Author: David Poll

(8 minutes, 51 seconds)

How do I use Views?

Video Downloads:
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Audio Downloads:
AAC | WMA | MPEG-4 | MPEG-3 | MPEG-2

Sample Code:
VB | C#

 

TechEd Presentations

Acropolis provides a rich, extensible foundation on which you can build flexible smart client applications. This session shows you how easy it is to build a rich Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) client application with the new framework. With only a few lines of code, you can layout your UI, have transition animation, theming support. We also demonstrate a few new WPF controls that we will be providing in Acropolis.

Author: Kathy Kam

(39 minutes, 16 seconds)

Building Rich Client UI With Acropolis

Video Downloads:
WMV | WMV (Zip) | Zune | iPod | PSP | MPEG-4 | 3GP

Audio Downloads:
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The Acropolis Client Framework makes it easy to build flexible and powerful Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications. Learn how to tap into the power of Acropolis and how it can help you deliver the next generation of client applications. In this session, we first describe the basic Acropolis" features and how you can use them to build rich WPF applications. We then move onto some of the more advanced features and show you how to leverage the frameworks flexibility to add rich navigation, theming, commanding, and supporting services to your applications.

Author: David Hill

(66 minutes, 52 seconds)

The Acropolis Client Application Framework

Video Downloads:
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Audio Downloads:
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Deep Dive Videos

This video series leads you on deep explorations of the sample applications provided by the Acropolis team.

The Acropolis Expense sample is a line of business application scenario implemented in Acropolis.  In this presentation we review its functionality and explore the structure of the application, and in so doing, demonstrate how the various pieces of Acropolis fit together to make rich application composition easier while maintaining a clean separation of business logic and presentation logic.

Authors: David Poll and Daniel Irwin

(18 minutes, 9 seconds)

Expense Sample

Video Downloads:
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Audio Downloads:
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    The RSS Eagle sample demonstrates Acropolis Navigation, Dynamic Pane Layout, Acropolis Transition and Acropolis Services. The first of the 3 short videos introduces the RSS Eagle Sample,explains its functionality in the context of Acropolis and focuses on the RssContentService as the reusable component of the business logic.

Author: Alex Bulankou

(11 minutes, 55 seconds)

RSS Eagle Sample, Part 1

Video Downloads:
WMV | WMV (Zip) | Zune | iPod | PSP | MPEG-4 | 3GP

Audio Downloads:
AAC | WMA | MPEG-4 | MPEG-3 | MPEG-2

The RSS Eagle sample demonstrates Acropolis Navigation, Dynamic Pane Layout, Acropolis Transition and Acropolis Services. This is the second of 3 short videos based on the RSS Eagle Sample.  In this presentation, we show how to build a custom navigator in Acropolis, and how that navigator can be consumed in the RSS Eagle Sample.

Author: Alex Bulankou

(9 minutes, 45 seconds)

RSS Eagle Sample, Part 2

Video Downloads:
WMV | WMV (Zip) | Zune | iPod | PSP | MPEG-4 | 3GP

Audio Downloads:
AAC | WMA | MPEG-4 | MPEG-3 | MPEG-2

    The RSS Eagle Sample demonstrates Acropolis Navigation, Dynamic Pane Layout, Acropolis Transitions, and Acropolis Services.  This is the third of 3 short videos based on the RSS Eagle Sample.  In this video, we demonstrate how you can create your own Acropolis theme by deriving from Microsoft.Acropolis.Windows.Theme class, merging one the predefined Acropolis Themes and adding your custom styles.

Author: Alex Bulankou

(5 minutes, 14 seconds)

RSS Eagle Sample, Part 3

Video Downloads:
WMV | WMV (Zip) | Zune | iPod | PSP | MPEG-4 | 3GP

Audio Downloads:
AAC | WMA | MPEG-4 | MPEG-3 | MPEG-2

Acropolis has many extension points through which applications can be customized.  The Acropolis Part Portal sample demonstrates how these customizations can be harnessed as well as the power that Acropolis brings to developers without limiting what they can accomplish.  In this presentation, we demonstrate how to use the Part Portal and explain some of the customizations of Acropolis components, specifically the LayoutPane and LifetimeManager, used in the sample.

Author: Brett Samblanet

(19 minutes, 43 seconds)

Part Portal Sample

Video Downloads:
WMV | WMV (Zip) | Zune | iPod | PSP | MPEG-4 | 3GP

Audio Downloads:
AAC | WMA | MPEG-4 | MPEG-3 | MPEG-2

    Acropolis simplifies application development by doing a lot of the plumbing that would otherwise have to be rewritten with every application for you.  This presentation demonstrates the creation of a simple text editing application, the Acropolis Notepad sample, from Acropolis Parts and Controls.  But this is no ordinary Notepad.  The Acropolis Notepad is our "Hello, World!" exercise, and showcases most of the basic features in Acropolis.  In this demonstration, we show how Acropolis makes extension and customization easy for the developer by adding some features that plain old Notepad never had.

Author: Ricky Tan

(11 minutes, 37 seconds)

Notepad Sample

Video Downloads:
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Audio Downloads:
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Featured Item

Acropolis Blog Posts


Enhanced Mix08 Videos Posted
Friday, May 16, 2008 by  Brad Abrams : WinForms, Acropolis, WPF, .NET Framework, Orcas

We recently finished the post product work required to get enhanced videos posted.  The videos not only include slides\demos, but also include a separate video stream of the speaker  so you get a deeper experience.   Mix08 Session...

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 "SP1" Beta
Tuesday, May 06, 2008 by  Brad Abrams : WinForms, Acropolis, WPF, .NET Framework, Orcas

VS2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 offer a ton of customer value from Linq to Ajax and much more.  The service pack we have been working on to round out this release adds even more new value in addition to fixing a 100s of customer reported bugs! ...

Job Openings Working on the .NET Framework Product Team
Thursday, May 01, 2008 by  Brad Abrams : WinForms, Acropolis, WPF, .NET Framework, Orcas

The single biggest factor for success on any project I have been apart of in the last 10 years at Microsoft is the people.  In a business like ours where intellectual capital is the biggest asset, hiring and growing people is an extremely important...

Job Openings Working on the .NET Framework Product Team
Thursday, May 01, 2008 by  Brad Abrams : WinForms, Acropolis, WPF, .NET Framework, Orcas

The single biggest factor for success on any project I have been apart of in the last 10 years at Microsoft is the people.  In a business like ours where intellectual capital is the biggest asset, hiring and growing people is an extremely important...


Acropolis Forum Posts


Acropolis Forum is now closed

As we work on having the concepts of Acropolis folded back into the platform. The Patterns and Practices team has recently launched a new "Prism" site on CodePlex at www.codeplex.com/prism . "Prism' is a set of work that patterns &...

Application Framework Road Map?

So, which is it? Prism or SCSF? or Unity? I have to select one and go with it and after a long review of related matterial I still don't have a clear picture of the Microsoft's road map for the application framework. Read More...

SATANS TAKE OVER OF USA GOVERMENT--THE TRUTH ABOUT THE 9-11 ATTACKS ON USA

www.pentagon9-11attacks.com MAIN BROWSER ONLY Read More...

Acropolis vs Unity

I'm a young coder learning about patterns and how to properly use them, so excuse me if I ask nonsense questions. I was wondering what the differences were between Acropolis and the Unity framework. Aren't they the same or similar? How are they...