"Floral" patterns seem to be the new gel button, as far as design trends go. Drawing on inspiration centuries old here are two finely crafted Damask brushes based on images from the inspiration gallery. OK, so maybe finely crafted was a bit of an over-statement (after all you can see the tiling lines in one of the brushes, but that makes it feel more "organic" or whatever). Enjoy responsibly here. »
Want to get started playing around with WPF applications, but you'd rather save your cash for some SLI video cards? Never fear - we've assembled a list of free (as in gratis) tools for most facets of WPF development. Essentials Visual Studio Express Editions (C#/VB.NET) and Visual Studio Extensions for .NET 3.0 will get you up and running and building "hello world". Optional - Development Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit for Windows Vista and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components - this SDK includes a number of samples, tools and documentation that can be very helpful when developing WPF applications. »
I recently had a scenario where I wanted a number of WPF text fields to support a co-ordinated undo/redo capability. The regular undo/redo facility in WPF (and most control tool-kits) applies to a single field. Changes to that field can be undone or re-applied, but each field is very much stand-alone and independent of those around it. I wanted a facility where a number of fields could be logically grouped together for the purposes of undo and redo operations, since I thought this would more closely match the user’s mental model of how the system worked. »
The MONO project - creators of an open-source, cross-platform CLR and set of base-class libraries and developer tools have indicated they will attempt to create their own implementation of Microsoft’s Silverlight. The new project is currently called Moonlight. »
With Expression Blend now officially released, and included as part of an MSDN subscription it seems to be an increasingly important tool for WPF developers as well as designers. Here are 4 recently announced books that can help you get up to speed with Expression Blend. Expression Blend Unleashed by Brennon Williams is scheduled for release in October and will be around 500 pages long. Brennon runs the http://expressionblend.com community site. »
The team at Vertigo that created the nice Family.Show WPF sample wrote up a summary of their key feedback and take-aways from the project, and they're well worth a read. One tip in particular that I liked was regarding data binding, and default values. They advised setting the default values in bindings to give a better design-time experience in tools like Blend, which uses the defaults when it displays the UI in the designer. »
One common way of moving the focus around in a user interface on Windows is to use the Tab key to move sequentially between controls. The contents of a WPF tool-bar seem to act like a kind of tabbing black-hole. The focus goes in there but never comes out again. Try pasting this Xaml into XamlPad to see the problem: Xaml Code (.NET 3.0) <DockPanel> <ToolBar DockPanel.Dock="Top"> <Button Content="B" Command="EditingCommands.ToggleBold" /> <Button Content="U" Command="EditingCommands.ToggleUnderline" /> <Button Content="I" Command="EditingCommands.ToggleItalic" /> </ToolBar> <RichTextBox /> </DockPanel> Fortunately this can be easily fixed by using the KeyboardNavigation attached property and changing the TabNavigation to "Continue". »
The project formerly known as Windows Presentation Foundation everywhere (WPF/e) has been re-named Sliverlight in preparation for its final release. Prior to WPF/e it was known as Jolt. Silverlight is a cross-platform and cross-browser plugin for creating rich internet experiences and applications for the web. It uses a subset of Xaml and WPF. You can read Tim Sneath's top 10 reasons you might be interested in Silverlight here. »
You may receive the following error message when trying to create a new XBAP application using the Visual Studio Orcas March 2007 CTP: "Error: this template attempted to load an untrusted component 'WinFxBrowserApplicationTemplateWizard, Culture=Neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'. For more information on this problem and how to enable this template, please see documentation on Customizing Project Templates." This is a defect in this pre-beta version of Visual Studio that should be corrected in the next release. »
WPF is all about creating great user experiences, but the user experience of your application starts long before your code starts running on the end user’s machine. An important first step is launching your application and getting your code down onto the end user’s machine as quickly and simply as possible. ClickOnce makes great strides in improving this deployment experience for .NET 2 rich client applications and WPF applications, however the default publish page that is generated by visual studio can be greatly improved. »