October 2009 - Posts
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wpfprerelease is the “WPF – Beta 2” forum. http://robrelyea.com/wpf/forum will take you to the normal WPF forum.
If you are using Beta2 and have questions/comments, etc… we’ll see you there.
Just ordered some new business cards…2 new things on this version of my card:
- On the front, the new .NET Framework logo:
![net-logo[1]](http://blogs.windowsclient.net/blogs/rob_relyea/netlogo1_thumb_5D07BC97.jpg "net-logo[1]")
- On the back, a Microsoft Tag linking to my contact information. Get the app, and capture the color tag below…and you’ll get my email & blog address easily put into your contacts. (The one I put on my business card also includes my work phone number.)
On a comment for our XAML Futures PDC09 talk, vplusplus asked:
…curious to know why MSFT chose a design approach of "not-using" BAML in Silverlight space? The compiler could have done the heavy-lifting as against the runtime...
Why do you ask?
I’m curious why vplusplus (and perhaps others of you) would ask for BAML. Why do you want Silverlight to do that performance optimization? Or are you interested in any and all perf optimizations, including BAML?
Thoughts?
My take
I believe that we’ll consider adding BAML into Silverlight in future releases if the benefit (perf gain) outweighs the cost (extra runtime code, etc…). Silverlight has started small and only added features for specific scenarios…if BAML becomes important based on this methodology, I’m sure we’d consider adding perf optimizations, like BAML, to Silverlight.
Very happy to see our upcoming XAML Futures talk posted to MicrosoftPDC.com. Mike and I are looking forward to meeting you there! We are working hard to make it a great session.
Michael Shim, Rob Relyea
Dive into advances in XAML happening in future versions of .NET, Silverlight, Microsoft Visual Studio, and Microsoft Expresssion Blend. Hear about XAML parsers, markup compilers, analysis, transformations, localization, and tools. Dig even deeper into performance optimizations possible in .NET, and explore possibilities with a XAML DOM and DLR based scripting.
ScottGu’s recent WPF4 Beta2 post had a comment asking about obfuscation:
# re: WPF 4 (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 5:58 AM by john
Yeah, but what about the ability to obfuscate your WPF app?
In WPF4 we haven’t improved that yet, however we’ve made progress towards that goal.
WPF has a Baml2006Reader class that can be used by Obfuscation engines to analyze types/members used in BAML. Unfortunately, WPF4 doesn’t yet include the corresponding Baml2006Writer that we had hoped to include.
It is in our backlog, and we hope to be able to address a number of customer concerns by providing the Baml2006Writer in the future.
Update
You are able to obfuscate types that aren’t mentioned in BAML just fine, by the way. So it isn’t that you can’t obfuscate WPF apps. You just don’t have the power to obfuscate them as much.
Scott Guthrie posted a summary post about all the new things in WPF4. Go check it out. The team has been busy, and continues to have a lot of customer significant work to do. WPF4 is a strong release for us, we hope you find it valuable to you.
If you are a big WPF customer, please make sure to try Beta2 as soon as possible with your application. Time is running out to make changes in WPF4…
A few other links
Thanks, Rob
Win95
When Windows 95 launched, I was a Microsoft Employee 2 years out of college, working as a Systems Engineer in Chicago. That day, when “Chicago” was launched, was a fun one. The Chicago Tribune was wrapped in a plastic bag with the windows logo, we had several thousand customers from Chicago at a launch event on Navy Pier.
Win7
Today, my paper wasn’t wrapped in the windows logo, but I’m very excited that Windows 7, and a wave of much improved hardware, is hitting the streets. At home, I’ve already upgraded 2 PCs to the final version…and my wife’s laptop is still running the RC version (gotta go do that..). Very happy with Windows 7 as a user at home!
WPF
As a WPF Team Member, I’m excited to see that Windows 7 includes .NET Framework 3.5sp1…in fact Windows Update is helping it reach more and more old versions of Windows as well.
Happy 7-day!
Good reading about Win7:
Here are a few things I read about Windows 7 that seem interesting:
Very happy to see .NET 4 and VS2010 hitting the beta2 milestone. It is available today (October 19th) for MSDN subscribers, and will be available for everybody starting October 21st.
The XAML team has been very busy since Beta1, with a number of significant improvements/changes in the Beta2 release. System.Xaml.dll, along with all of .NET 4 and VS 2010, is almost ready for prime time…
New in Beta2:
API Complete – many minor changes throughout the API, and some major refactoring (XamlSchemaContext) to enable perf improvements.
Architectural Layering Complete – System.Xaml.dll no longer has a dependency on WindowsBase.dll. It only builds on top of MsCorLib.dll, System.dll, and System.Xml.dll. We type forwarded several types from WindowsBase.dll (ContentPropertyAttribute, etc…) into System.Xaml.dll as part of this change.
More to come soon on XAML, WPF and Cider improvements.
Last week, I picked up an HTC Imagio from the “Mall of Microsoft” Verizon store. I’m loving touch, a better browser, better email, and Windows Marketplace.
Despite the appeal of the new Zune HD, my plan is to to use Zune Software with my phone for my podcasts/music as well…
Still no XAML on this phone though…
The annual giving campaign just kicked off inside of Microsoft. I’m proud that Microsoft employees do such a good job giving time, money, and software to many different causes.
Just thought I would share my technique for giving...as I’ve found that it has made the donation process easier; helped me track + increase over time; and takes less of my time.
Giving
My technique goes something like this:
1) Get Automated – when I started to get automated, I took that year’s donations and set them up to automatically happen next year via payroll deduction. At Microsoft you can do this via an internal website: http://give
2) Review list annually – add and remove to your list of charities annually.
3) Review balance of giving – I have different tiers of charities…those I give the most to, those I give some to, etc…
4) Increase as you can – Each year, I try to bump up my total giving, usually equally across the board. If cash flow is tight that year, I may cut a charity and give more to the others.
5) Don’t give to all – I often tell charities that aren’t on my list that I’m already committed for the year. If they are worthy of consideration to add, I’ll give something to them in the middle of the year, and then add them to my annual list during the giving campaign.
6) Taxes – Make sure to take deductions for what you can give, at tax time. Keeping all the giving organized makes it easier to remember all your giving…
Happy giving!
Volunteering
I do spend time running a Y-Guides group that my son is in. I’d like to do more of this though…especially since Microsoft will donate more money for my time ($17/hr) if I spend more than 10 hours/year.