Rob Relyea - XAMLified

DLR is the Dynamic Language Runtime...a library for the CLR (.Net or Silverlight) that enables "scripting" or "dynamic" languages (Ruby/Python/etc...). Check out DLR Pad on CodePlex to see a XamlPad app where you have an additional script window.  Lots of potential for DLR + Xaml in the future...DLR Pad at CodePlex

Blog Posts
Introduction to DLR Pad - http://ligaz.blogspot.com/2007/11/dlr-pad-interactive-programming-with.html
DLR Pad on CodePlex - http://ligaz.blogspot.com/2007/11/dlr-pad-on-codeplex.html

If you want to host the DLR in your app...here is a quick code example showing some of the basics from Ryan Dawson of the DLR team.
Update: see the comments...this is a more current link on how to host the DLR: http://www.ironpython.info/index.php/Hosting_IronPython_2

Thanks to Dr. WPF for helping out my customer with how to create a menu like Vista Explorer's View Menu.

Does the doctor ever stop?

• He answers lots of questions about WPF.
• He posts some great WPF Snippets for VS
• He discusses his obsession with getting to 5 stars on the forums.
• He talks alot about ItemsControls - a critical concept to understand in WPF land.
• ...

Thanks!

Jeffrey Snover (PowerShell Architect) pointed to Nanda's post asking for feedback for the Windows SDK team.  Do you use the Command Prompt provided by the Windows SDK...wanna see it be PowerShell based?

I often use msbuild from the command line, but I'm not yet a PowerShell proficient dev...

A very cool set of apps that I'm just catching up with now...

1 - a tablet app written in C++

2 - Silverlight 2 + a c# physics engine

3 - Wii Remote + WPF

4 - Silverlight 2 + data visualization

5 - WPF "mirror" shopping experience

I haven't had a chance to check out the 11 other entries...please call out a few in comments if some are especially worth a look for inspiration.

Read this thread "Is there a control like LinkLabel in WPF" on the WPF Forum.  Lubo pointed to his control via his "Building a WPF LinkLabel control".

LinkLabel gives you a Hyperlink like control, but as a UIElement...(so it can be put directly in a StackPanel, etc...)

In order to help VB developers trying to learn about WPF, the VB team worked with a couple of VB experts to convert all samples appearing in Charles Petzold's book to VB.  (Buy the book, follow along with the VB samples).

Late January, they posted the final chapters...so have at it!

Link to a single download: Petzold_WPF_VB_All.zip

To access code files for individual chapters, visit http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/petzoldsamplevb which will take you to the MSDN Code Gallery page for this project.  Click on 'Releases' tab to access code files.

Has anybody done this in WPF?  Have a customer who wants to do it...

Wanna share your code/tips?

We just published two specifications today, which you can download from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3356AF19-A36E-4D6D-9D13-C37DB81EE607&displaylang=en

• [MS-XAML] Xaml Object Mapping Specification 2006 - this describes Xaml's rules.
• [MS-WPFXV] WPF Xaml Vocabulary Specification 2006 - this describes WPF's types usable in Xaml.

Learn more about Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (OSP) here: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx

Very excited to have them out to the world!

[Update 3/26]

I've created 2 easy to remember URLs to get to either of those specs directly in their PDF form.

• http://robrelyea.com/xaml/spec
• http://robrelyea.com/wpf/xvSpec

• I like Nigel's RibbonBar...put it in XamlPad* and see a working Ribbon.
• He also discusses the problem confronting developers when they try to do something like drawing a star.  Several ways to do it.

* - or XamlPad like app - http://robrelyea.com/xaml/editors

• Nice site for Expression information: http://expression.microsoft.com
• News, Bloggers, Forums, Support: http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/cc136519.aspx
• Quick Start Guides, Webcasts, Self-Study Tutorials: http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/cc136522.aspx
• ...

A very nice series of posts are in the works:

• In "The Introduction", Eran provides an overview of DataModel/View/ViewModel.
• In "The DataModel", he writes about a DataModel class deriving "from DispatcherObject because we need to have the Dispatcher available so that we can run background jobs that dispatch results to the UI thread."
• ...more are coming

If you crave some of WPF's goodness, but need to run on more than just Windows...Silverlight's latest Beta1 build and associated tools is a great place to start.  Jesse helps you figure out what's what and where's where: http://silverlight.net/blogs/jesseliberty/archive/2008/03/18/tip-of-the-day-getting-started-with-silverlight-2.aspx

I believe having WPF + Silverlight as options is great for developers/designers/businesses.  The fact that they are compatible, use the same markup, programming languages, dev tools, designer tools, etc..., but can target great desktop apps or great web apps is a beautiful thing.

• Happy to see the news from Microsoft's Sam Ramji @ EclipseCon08:

Among a range of other opportunities (which we’re still working on), we discovered that Steve Northover (the SWT team lead) had gotten requests to make it easy for Java developers to write applications that look and feel like native Windows Vista. He and a small group of developers built out a prototype that enables SWT to use Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). We’re committing to improve this technology with direct support from our engineering teams and the Open Source Software Lab, with the goal of a first-class authoring experience for Java developers.

• Intergraph news and discussion of Silverlight: http://jeffhobbs.net/2008/03/20/the-future-of-svg-and-geomedia-webmap/
• We need to make sure that people can process Xaml better than this: http://itdistilled.blogspot.com/2008/03/namespace-problem-in-xaml.html

On his WPF WTFs blog, Jerry looks like he has been very busy in his 5 months of blogging about WPF.  Several things caught my eye:

• "Embedding PNGs into RTF files" in order to implement drag/drop from a WPF app to Word/Outlook.
• I just got the question from a major software company about Virtualizing WrapPanel...looks like Jerry did that too: "Making a Virtualizing WrapPanel".  (no code, but he helps explain more about how to do it...)
• He lists his favorite WPF Utilities (Snoop, Mole, WPF Perf, Reflector, Pistachio).

The one I just learned about @ Mix is Pistachio (by Grant Hinkson) helps you track used/unused resources in your app.  This is when I was talking at the same time with Robby (KaXaml), Grant (Pistachio), and Karl (Mole)...  [Good strategy: Look for a hole in WPF tooling...fill it with a useful tool...give it a cool name...help out yourself and others]

• Lightweight drawing with DrawingVisuals
• Lightweight Drawing with DrawingVisuals: Part 1 of 2
• Lightweight Drawing with DrawingVisuals: Part 2 of 2
• The Evils of Layered Windows
• Which hopefully he can update now that Jossef has blogged about Vista Layered Windows Performance hotfix now available on Microsoft Download Center.  I think there is an XP fix as well...

Sad that I'm just running the cool scheduling app that Thirteen23.com put together for Mix08.  I think I tried before Mix...but I had some special builds of WPF installed, so the app didn't work on my machines.

Now my machines are happier and I can see the really nice User Experience (Ux)!  Even though picking sessions to see @ Mix08 doesn't make much sense anymore, seeing as it already happened, I recommend you run this app and learn from it:

• Launch it from their page.  It uses ClickOnce to install.
• Click on the different days of the week on the top.  It transitions nicely to the schedule for that day.
• Go to Thursday.  Click on "Click here to change" in the 8:30am timeslot.  It transitions to a list of sessions.
• Choose "What's New in Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5".  It transitions back to the schedule for that day.
• Nice use of animations, etc...

Couple of additional things I'd want to see:

• It'd be nice to be able to search for a term like "WPF" to filter sessions in a slot for technologies you are most interested in.
• Now that Mix is over, it'd be cool to provide a rich client experience for viewing the videos online..a session picking tool that also covers viewing the sessions afterwards.

Shouldn't TechEd/PDC use this kind of thing?  What else would you want it to do?

Update (4/15/2008): I just ran across a Silverlight scheduling application as well.  Clearly not as well polished, but it may be useful to folks