May 2010 - Posts
Some WPF customers have complained about this help that WPF tries to provide:
Layout recursion reached allowed limit to avoid stack overflow: '255'
We saw the feedback via this forum post, and thought we fixed it in 3.5sp1. I posted in April 2008 that the fix was coming…By the time we got feedback that we didn’t quite fix it (we only changed 1 constant in the code, and there were several necessary), 3.5sp1 was already virtually out the door.
The good news is that we’ve fixed this in WPF 4 to allow a new higher limit of 4096.
That said, use this newfound power responsibly, you really should be trying to keep your visual count down. We realize that some scenarios were blocked by the original limit. We hope this makes things better for you.
Please continue to be vocal with feedback!
Love this post by Michael Sorens about some essential tools.
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is simultaneously enticing and intimidating. It offers potential for amazing flexibility in UI design but there is a mountain of learning to climb. At the time of writing I am still very much in the foothills, gazing upward. This is my second article on WPF wherein I attempt to give both you and me a “leg up” on the WPF climb from a unique perspective. In this article I present a collection of little known but useful utility applications that can assist you as you learn and develop WPF code.
He dives into:
- SDK XAML Browser
- XamlT (TypeExplorer) – something I did back in 2007.
- Gradient Editor
- Snoop Visual WPF Debugger
- Windows Forms to XAML – i’ve recently pointed to this also
- DumpControlTemplate
- SDK + Sample Viewer
- XamlPad and its Successors – great write up of the pros/cons of XamlPad, XamlPadX, XAML Cruncher, Kaxaml, XamlPad Sample, XamlHack.
Thanks Michael – great write up and analysis! Definitely worth a read if you live in a XAML universe…
We should all get in the habit of being very specific of what versions of tools and frameworks we are targetting when we run into problems.
I recently replied internally to some vague question:
We have so many XAML parsers/compilers/designers in this company :-), it would help if you could be very specific.
Which version of Silverlight are you using? SL3/SL4/WP7(SL3++)?
Which designer are you using? Blend3/Blend4/VS2008+stuff/VS2010/VS2010+SL4Tools?
I’ve mentioned before that I’ve wanted to see Windows grow to support multiple keyboards and mice on the same computer.
A WPF Forum Question about using a 2nd monitor’s touch screen without interfering with applications on the other screen, is another instance of a similar thing…and probably a more important scenario.
Having a touch monitor as a related, but separately addressable device sounds like a great scenario to enable…
Top 10 WPF Performance Tips – Christian Moser
- Wouldn’t it be cool if somebody wrote a tool to help analyze an app to ensure best practices…
Finding Memory Leaks in WPF based applications – Jossef Goldberg
- Jossef and his team help analyze many WPF applications, and share their learnings.
WPFPerf Performance Profiling Tools for WPF 4 – now available – Jossef Goldberg
- Works for WPF 3.5sp1 or WPF 4 apps! Included in Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET 4…
Great news on Scott’s blog that Silverlight 4 Tools for VS 2010 was released. And further details here:
“Please Note: many of the new designer features work well with WPF as well as Silverlight projects, so this download is definitely recommended for Visual Studio 2010 WPF designer users too.”
As part of this support, several things got better for WPF developers as well. So if you are targetting WPF 3.x or 4, VS2010 + Silverlight 4 Tools for VS 2010 is the current state of the art tooling from Microsoft.
I’ve always loved the idea that Visual Studio could help you get started with a WPF application a bit more than is possible today. Today, we give you a blank project. Visual Studio still hasn’t found time to make this happen yet, but luckily its extensibility enables others to step in.
Devexpress has built “WPF Project Wizard” (go watch the short video) which shows a Wizard at the time of project creation and gives you several choices at project creation time. Sure beats an empty window!
Have you recently been looking at Silverlight and WPF for a project. I’m interested in hearing feedback from people who have built both before. When have you chosen Silverlight over WPF for a project and why? When have you chosen WPF over Silverlight for a project and why? Describe the project. Did you end up with a SL OOB, SL Web, WPF App or WPF XBAP?
Clearly as Silverlight’s feature set grows, and as .NET adds new capabilities to its already large feature set, we’ve given some people tough questions about what to choose.
You can blog a response and leave a trackback or a comment pointing to it, or leave a long comment.
I’d like to learn from you, and help the Silverlight and WPF team meet your needs as we are planning our next versions…
Thanks, Rob
Youchay Kiriaty posted “Windows API Code Pack – Past, Present, and Future”.
Please give it a read if you are trying to build great Windows apps from Managed code…and give your feedback to Youchay’s post.
I like Tracy Sell’s “Visual Studio 2010 – First Impressions”. Shows pictures and hits several highlights of good things for WPF/Silverlight devs in VS 2010.
[update] Paul Stovell also chimes in with his real world endorsement of VS 2010's WPF Designer: "... My thanks to the team for surprising me by how well the 2010 designer works." Love to hear that!!