Assembly Required

.Net Best Practices Event

Shannon Braun — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:32:59 GMT

Here is the deck and code samples I presented for the .NET Best Practices event that was hosted in St. Louis, Missouri on March 24th and in Bloomington, Mn on March 31st.

Building Loosely Coupled Applications

DeckAndCode.zip (2.58 MB)

MSDN Presentation: Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services

Shannon Braun — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:30:31 GMT

Here is the presentation and code samples I delivered last Tuesday at the MSDN Developer Conference. Let me know if you have any problems getting the demos running or have questions.

Slide Deck
Live Fx Demo
Task List Mesh Application

MSDN Developer Conference Coming Tuesday Jan. 13th, 2009…

Shannon Braun — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:18:10 GMT

I am speaking on Microsoft’s Live Framework and Live Mesh. It also looks like they are going to have some great door prizes. Check it out.

Pasting Slides in PowerPoint, Messes Up My Custom Diagrams

Shannon Braun — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 04:06:03 GMT

Typically when I speak at events I get a deck that has a custom layout and color palette. If I am creating my own material I typically paste existing slides with diagrams I have constructed from past presentations or guidance which had completely different layouts and themes. This results in diagrams that typically have color issues or limited color palette to select from. Here is an example of one very simple diagram that had some animation to explain how you could take advantage of animation to create a better user experience.

Notice how the the options for Quick Styles has no variation in color and my drawing inherited very basic colors with the variations shown in the drop down. You can introduce more colors by selecting from a number of available themes buried in the Slide Master. To access these themes do the following:

Click on the View Tab, then select Slide Master.

Next, select the Colors dropdown.

From there you will get a list of Presentation theme palettes and Built-In palettes. Since I draw all of my diagrams/graphics using the Office theme, I can now select that and utilize the color variation in the Office theme to create consistent looking diagrams across different presentation templates and when these diagrams are pasted into the new presentations, they look the same.

Below is the diagram from above with the built-in office theme and the use of Quick Styles.

Insulating against grid row order changes in WPF

Shannon Braun — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:40:21 GMT

One of the things that I don't like about the WPF Grid is the fact that if you insert new rows into a grid layout control you have to update the Grid.Row attached property to ensure that the rows render in proper order.

For example, if you supplied xaml that showed contact information and looked something like this:

here is the xaml representation:

<Border BorderBrush="LightGray" BorderThickness="1" Padding="10" CornerRadius="10">            <Grid>                <Grid.Resources>                    <Thickness x:Key="Rowspacing">7</Thickness>                </Grid.Resources>                <Grid.RowDefinitions>                    <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />                </Grid.RowDefinitions>                <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>                    <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" />                    <ColumnDefinition Width="*" />                </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>                 <Label Grid.Row="0" Content="First
Name:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right" />                <Label Grid.Row="1" Content="Last
Name:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>                <Label Grid.Row="2" Content="Street
Address:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>                <Label Grid.Row="3" Content="City:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>                <Label Grid.Row="4" Content="State:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>                <Label Grid.Row="5" Content="Zip:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>                <Label Grid.Row="6" Content="Company:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>                  <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="0" Text="Shannon" MinWidth="300" VerticalAlignment="Center" />                <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="1" Text="Braun" AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalAlignment="Center"></TextBox>                <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="2" Text="111
Main Street" AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalAlignment="Center"></TextBox>                <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="3" Text="Minneapolis" AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalAlignment="Center"></TextBox>                <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="4" Text="Mn" AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalAlignment="Center"></TextBox>                <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="5" Text="55414" AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalAlignment="Center"></TextBox>                <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="6" Text="Sysknowlogy" AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalAlignment="Center"></TextBox>                            </Grid>        </Border>

If I wanted to insert a row between Grid.Row="0" (First Name) and Grid.Row="1" (Last Name) I would have to also update the Grid.Row attached property for all of the rows after the insert.

One of the ways to get around this is to bind the Grid.Row attached property on the Labels and Textboxes to the Index of the RowDefinition. When a RowDefinition is inserted or moved there is no need to update the indexes. Unfortunately the RowDefinition doesn't expose a Index, so using the Binding facilities of WPF won't work here. Instead we will leverage a MarkupExtension to translate the the reference to the RowDefinition name to the actual index of that RowDefinition, insulating us from any row inserts or changes in order.

The first step is to add a name to each of the RowDefinitions so that we can reference them.

<RowDefinition x:Name="Row_FirstName" Height="Auto" />

<RowDefinition x:Name="Row_LastName" Height="Auto" />

<RowDefinition x:Name="Row_Street" Height="Auto" />

<RowDefinition x:Name="Row_City" Height="Auto" />

<RowDefinition x:Name="Row_State" Height="Auto" />

<RowDefinition x:Name="Row_Zip" Height="Auto" />

<RowDefinition x:Name="Row_Company" Height="Auto" />

Write the MarkUpExtension that will support the translation from element name to row index... the result looks like the following:

[MarkupExtensionReturnType(typeof(int))]public class MapTo
: MarkupExtension{    ///
<summary>    ///
Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="MapTo"/> class.    ///
</summary>    public MapTo()    {    }     ///
<summary>    ///
Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="MapTo"/> class.    ///
</summary>    ///
<param name="rowName">Name of the row.</param>    public MapTo(string rowName)    {        _name = rowName;    }     private string _name;    ///
<summary>    ///
Gets or sets the name of the element.    ///
</summary>    ///
<value>The name of the element.</value>    public string ElementName    {        get { return _name;
}        set { _name = value;
}    }     ///
<summary>    ///
When implemented in a derived class, returns an object that is set as the value of
the target property for this markup extension.    ///
</summary>    ///
<param name="serviceProvider">Object that can provide services for the markup
extension.</param>    ///
<returns>    ///
The object value to set on the property where the extension is applied.    ///
</returns>    public override object ProvideValue(IServiceProvider
serviceProvider)    {         IProvideValueTarget ipvt = (IProvideValueTarget)serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(IProvideValueTarget));         int idx
= -1;        if (ipvt
!= null)        {                        FrameworkElement target = ipvt.TargetObject as FrameworkElement;            if (target
!= null)            {                                Grid grd = target.Parent as Grid;                if (grd
!= null)                {                    idx = GetRowIndex(grd);                }                else                    throw new NullReferenceException("Grid
was not found as the parent of element " + _name);            }        }         return idx;     }     ///
<summary>    ///
Gets the index of the row based on the name of the element.    ///
</summary>    ///
<param name="parent">The parent.</param>    ///
<returns></returns>    private int GetRowIndex(Grid
parent)    {        int idx
= -1;        if (parent
!= null)        {            RowDefinition rowDefinition = parent.FindName(_name) as RowDefinition;             if (rowDefinition
!= null)            {                idx = parent.RowDefinitions.IndexOf(rowDefinition);            }            else                throw new NullReferenceException("RowDefinition
was not found for name " + _name);        }         return idx;    }}

Next we use the MapTo MarkUpExtension in xaml to identify the row index for both the Labels and TextBoxes:

<Border BorderBrush="LightGray" BorderThickness="1" Padding="10" CornerRadius="10">            <Grid>                <Grid.Resources>                    <Thickness x:Key="Rowspacing">7</Thickness>                </Grid.Resources>                <Grid.RowDefinitions>                    <RowDefinition x:Name="Row_FirstName" Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition x:Name="Row_LastName" Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition x:Name="Row_Street" Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition x:Name="Row_City" Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition x:Name="Row_State" Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition x:Name="Row_Zip" Height="Auto" />                    <RowDefinition x:Name="Row_Company" Height="Auto" />                </Grid.RowDefinitions>                <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>                    <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" />                    <ColumnDefinition Width="*" />                </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>                 <Label Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_FirstName}" Content="First
Name:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right" />                <Label Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_LastName}" Content="Last
Name:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>                <Label Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_Street}" Content="Street
Address:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>                <Label Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_City}" Content="City:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>                <Label Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_State}" Content="State:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>                <Label Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_Zip}" Content="Zip:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>                <Label Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_Company}" Content="Company:" Margin="{StaticResource
Rowspacing}" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>                  <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_FirstName}" Text="Shannon" MinWidth="300" VerticalAlignment="Center" />                <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_LastName}" Text="Braun" AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalAlignment="Center"></TextBox>                <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_Street}" Text="111
Main Street" AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalAlignment="Center"></TextBox>                <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_City}" Text="Minneapolis" AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalAlignment="Center"></TextBox>                <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_State}" Text="Mn" AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalAlignment="Center"></TextBox>                <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_Zip}" Text="55414" AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalAlignment="Center"></TextBox>                <TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="{local:MapTo
Row_Company}" Text="Sysknowlogy" AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalAlignment="Center"></TextBox>             </Grid>        </Border>

To add additional rows, add a new RowDefinition with a name and then map the Grid.Row attached property to the name of the row.

Download Project: GridLayoutApproach.zip

PDC 2008 - Microsoft shows huge commitment to WPF in development tools

Shannon Braun — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:08:30 GMT

Microsoft has used WPF to write tools in the past... Expression Blend and Design being two of those tools among others. Its extremely exciting to see that they are making even a bigger commitment to WPF as a platform for writing applications. This week at PDC they announced that the shell of the Visual Studio 2010 IDE will be written in WPF. Since Visual Studio has a huge legacy code base and many tools already built a top the DTE, not all of it will be converted to WPF and managed code. However, one of the most noticeable changes will be that the code editor will be written using the rich text capabilities of WPF... which means that we will now have a very powerful presentation model (rich text, animation, etc) in the IDE that we can leverage to build better IDE experiences. This also means that the bar for extending Visual Studio IDE will be greatly reduced.

Customizing the Visual Studio Start Page

One of the extension points for VS 10 will be modifying the start page... which is possible today, but the model for integrating into other aspects of the IDE (like macros or commands) will be far simpler than what we have today. To customize the home page will require you to modify the Xaml file that is found in Documents\Visual Studio 10\Start Page\StartPage.xaml. To integrate with Visual Studio commands will be a matter of passing in a well-known string identifier for the command.

Managed Extension Framework (MEF) enables the Add-In Model

The new text editor will be composed of MEF components which can be swapped out and customized by supplying your own implementation. The customization capabilities will be limited to the following areas :

Classification: Rich Text Formatting

- Which will allow us to create a richer reading environment for code.

- Ability to leverage WPF's rich text capabilities.

Adornments: Power Graphics

Any WPF visual - can render a UI element anywhere.

- Associate adornments with text, render comments in the MSDN document style inline with code.

- Support for animation and behavior of different aspects of the code.

Margin and Scrollbar Customization

- Allows for the ability to create visual representations of structure in the margins of the code editor... this looked very similar to the way ReSharper implemented their Marker Bar (shown below).

Intellisense and Smart Tags

- Contribute to completion of Intellisense ... meaning that we can now filter items. For a long time I have wanted the ability to modify the intellisense so that when I need to I can just view only the properties, methods or events for a type... and it looks like now the bar may be lowered enough to implement something like this relatively easily.

- Override the presentation of the parameter help or quick info

- Add menu items to smart tags

If you want more information, you can check out the videos on channel9.

PDC 2008 - Day 2 Keynote

Shannon Braun — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:51:04 GMT

Yesterday's keynote talked heavily about infrastructure... today was focused Windows 7 and the frameworks /services we use to build applications in the cloud. They did a cursory review of the new features of Windows 7 with a focus on behavior and user experience. They also drilled down into some of the new features that appeal to more of a power user... the ability to create and attach to VHD's from within Windows and even boot to them if you would like. It also showed more capability around configuring multi-monitors... ability to remote desktop into another machine which will then use your multi-monitor setup (that's cool). They also said that they are focused on creating a quality OS and they will not release Windows 7 until it is ready.

Check out the E7 Blog and give feedback on Windows 7.

They also made a number of important announcements around WPF and Silverlight:

Releasing the Ribbon control for WPF in CTP form
Adding touch events onto WPF elements to support multi-touch
Released controls include DataGrid, DatePicker, Calendar and Visual State Manager

Visual Studio 2010 will be built on WPF!!!!!

It will support richer code editing support
It will utilize the Managed Extensibility Framework to extend Visual Studio... which simplifies the add-in model.

Silverlight

Added the following controls to Silverlight 2.0... Chart, Treeview, DockPanel, WrapPanel, Viewbox, Expander, Autocomplete and a couple of others.
Enabling the ability to run Silverlight both on the desktop and browser

WPF Office Ribbon and other goodies released at PDC

Shannon Braun — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:55:06 GMT

You can get the newest WPF Ribbon, DatePicker/Calendar control, preview of VisualStateManager (VSM) for WPF from the WPF Toolkit site... in addition the DataGrid is now out of CTP and was released.

PDC 2008 - Blend Tips & Tricks

Shannon Braun — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:48:07 GMT

I was a little disappointed in the content of this presentation. There wasn't as many Tips & Tricks as I would have expected. One of the tips they attempted to show (which the demo actually failed) involved showing what happens when you try to access an object that isn't available on the Blend design surface... the result on the design surface is an exception that keeps you the user from previewing the UI. If I recall correctly they were were trying to check whether the Page object was available by checking the IsEnabled property, which seems a bit unusual. I have ran into similar issues with Blend and this is the trick I have used before accessing an object that may not be available when the UI is rendered on the design surface.

///
<summary>    ///
Base class for all Parts in the Shell    ///
</summary>    public class UIPart
: System.Windows.Controls.UserControl, IPart    {                #region Constructors         ///
<summary>        ///
Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="UIPart"/> class.        ///
</summary>        public UIPart()        {            //if
we don't check this... the UI will not display correctly in the designer.            if (InDesignMode)                return;             partIdField = this.GetType().Name
+ "_" + Guid.NewGuid();             this.GotFocus
+= UIPart_GotFocus;            this.Loaded
+= UIPart_Loaded;            this.IsVisibleChanged
+= UIPart_IsVisibleChanged;            this.Initialized
+= UIPart_Initialized;        }         ///
<summary>        ///
Gets a value indicating whether [in design mode].        ///
</summary>        ///
<value><c>true</c> if [in design mode]; otherwise, <c>false</c>.</value>        public bool InDesignMode        {            get { return System.ComponentModel.DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(this);
}        }

One thing that I did gleam from the talk was that there is a new version of Snoop available that has the capability to render the composition of an application in a 3D model, the composite model of Blend is shown below:

PDC 2008 Keynote

Shannon Braun — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:23:16 GMT

Announced Windows Azure - Web Tier offering that can be thought of as Windows in the cloud.

Scalable Storage
Scalable Computing Power
Services Lifecycle Management

The systems that are being built today are laying the ground work for the next 50 years.

Services platform will include the following support:

Live Services - Acts as a bridge between devices (phones, laptops and other devices)
.NET Services - Workflow, authorization and identity federation.
SQL Services - Data Store
SharePoint Services - Collaboration
Dynamics CRM Services - Business Content

Ray pointed out, that even though they aren't the first to enter the cloud services arena (Amazon just went out of beta this week with their offering EC2), they have some key components that allow them to provider a better platform:

Microsoft is consuming their own cloud services to build Microsoft offerings in the cloud.
Microsoft will use the existing tools we have today to build systems that run in the cloud.

Demo - Building Cloud Applications... was a basic demo of how you could build a ASP.NET web site and use the Azure console to upload a package (binaries and configuration meta data) to be deployed to the platform for serving up the information.

Demo - Bluehoo.com

Social Networking application that shows you who is around you based on BlueTooth protocol on your cell phone. Similar to how you detect wireless networks... except you are detecting people that are part of the Bluehoo network. Bluehoo is utilizing Windows Azure to support their application scalability.

m.bluehoo.com - beta is available later today.

Another WPF Debugging Tool - Cracked.NET

Shannon Braun — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:52:27 GMT

I met with Josh Smith tonight and he had mentioned that he has released a new debugging tool for WPF (I think it will also work on WinForms) called Cracked.NET. One of the things that is interesting about this is that Josh is using Iron Python to inject scripts into the application at runtime.

Twin City Code Camp slides - Using WPF in Line of Business Applications

Shannon Braun — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:54:35 GMT

Back on October 11th I spoke at the Twin City Code Camp. Here is the slide deck that was used.

Slides: Building LOB Applications with WPF.zip

Its tough to stay on top of blogs...

Shannon Braun — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:33:01 GMT

So today I was discussing this with Scott Colestock and he suggested rssfwd... not that I need more email... but at least I can quickly browse important tidbytes that may be announced... and unnoticed by me if I am not actively following my blog roll.

This post is actually a test to see how it actually works.

ASP.NET Team continues to innovate above Desktop counterparts...

Shannon Braun — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:35:33 GMT

For years the ASP.NET team has been out ahead of the WinForms team with innovating features that want to make you use their platform. They have pushed for features that support common development scenarios (Personalization, Membership, Profile,Site Navigation, Administrative Website, Master Pages and the list goes on and on) that developers encounter in many of the applications they write. WinForms did have some goodies... but definitely not at the same level, or maybe they just didn't market it like the ASP.NET team. When you talk about ASP.Net and luminaries at Microsoft, you think of people like Rob Howard (who left a while back to start his own company) and Scot Guthrie. These two guys promoted the heck out of ASP.Net and its capabilities when it arrived back in 2002. When you think of luminaries from Microsoft in the WinForms world... well... no one really comes to mind. Remember, I said Microsoft only... outside of Microsoft... Rocky Lhotka and Billy Hollis come to mind.

The ASP.Net team did it again in making it easier to get what you need to build your development environment for developing web applications. As I contemplated whether I was going to wipe my box tonight, I was searching around to see if anyone had a good method of automating the installation of all the development tools required to develop for the Microsoft web and desktop platforms. I stumbled across the Microsoft Web Platform Installer Beta...

Now if we could just get this through a MSDN subscription, so that we would have access to the actual versions of the tools rather than the Express versions.