Since .NET 4.0 Beta 1 was released a few weeks ago I’ve been sniffing here and there around the framework for averything new. The WPF 3D team posted a series of new features aroung graphics that I thought of broadcasting:

RenderOptions.ClearTypeHint: If WPF renders text into a potentially transparent surface (e.g. a layered window like a menu or popup) we use grayscale anti-aliasing instead of ClearType because if the transparent surface is blended with another transparent surface, the ClearType will get messed up. Now with ClearTypeHint you can tell us to use ClearType and we’ll trust you that things aren’t transparent.

The BitmapEffect classes are now no-ops. They are still there so your apps will compile but don’t expect them to do anything.

The default RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode (Unspecified) is now Linear instead of Fant. If you still want Fant, you can re-enable it.

Pixel Shader 2.0 is now required for hardware acceleration. Yes, if your card was Tier 1 but did not have PS 2.0 it is now Tier 0.

The memory leak that was easy to hit with software 3D has been fixed. I already mentioned this.

A common VisualBrush.Visual disconnect crash has been fixed. It’s in the same KB article as the memory leak.

Everything else is being kept for Beta 2… Have fun

It’s been a while since I posted here, and shameless as it might seem I just moved to my new appartment and it’s been a busy month.

Trying to redeem my self, It’s time for another great announcement: On Monday, Microsoft released Visual Studio/Team System 2010 and .NET 4.0 Beta 1 for those who are MSDN subscribers. Well today it is time for everyone else to have a piece of the cake. Counting from yesterday, the download is publically available to anyone who wants to download it. I have to say that this is indeed a treat. The new features are simply awesome, and I’m yet to see the end of them. Will this be the end of those Silent Crashes?

 Give it a test drive here.

I’ll be checking out (a bit seriously this time) the December 2008 revision of Windows Presentation Foundation Application Quality Guide. I’m a big fan of quality and patterned development (see this as enjoying being in control of things) and whenever I see any initiative regarding this matter I tend to give it some attention whenever I can. The fact that I’m currently developing with WPF, Prism and MEF definitely leads me towards this behaviour, whether it’s for my own professional and technical training, nor for the enrichment of the skills of my team.

This Quality Guide is 100% focused on WPF. It is a work-in-progress document that explains the in’s and out’s of WPF in a quality assurance fashion, from architecture, testing concerns, design, security, localization, best practices and so forth. It ends with some links to online resources, tools and contacts that you can take advantage of.

You can check out the online version here, and the full document can be downloaded here. It’s about 77 pages, and it is currently in version 0.4.

Enjoy…

Prism v2.0 was released yesterday. Also known as Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight, Prism is designed to help you more easily build enterprise-level Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight client applications. It will help you design and build enterprise-level composite WPF client applications—composite applications use loosely coupled, independently evolvable pieces that work together in the overall application. The guidance includes a reference implementation, reusable library code (named the Composite Application Library), documentation, QuickStart tutorials, and hands-on labs.

This version of the Composite Application Guidance is designed to help you build WPF and Silverlight applications that have a single code base.

This release happened while I was giving a talk on Prism v1 at Microsoft DevDays 2009, Portugal. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to check this while in the event, so I wasn’t on time to notify my atendees of this.

Oh well… Here’s the link. Have fun developing with these cool patterns on WPF and Silverlight!

My presentation was yesterday. It took place in main room 5 at 2:30 PM. Overall I guess it went okay, taking into consideration that I nearly had no time to sleep in the previous 4 days… Yeah… It sucks… I had to work over the weekend all night long till monday, so I tool thursday to prepare my presentation. I wasn’t expecting this but, it comes with the job.

Also due to my current ongoing project at Microfil, I wasn’t able to stay in the event both days, so I ended up going back to Oporto in the same day. Today the event ends and I hope everything goes well acoording to Microsoft Portugal expectations.

So, here’s DevDays 2009 Prism deck. Feel free to contact me if need any help.

One quick tip for those using the ItemsControl element on a xaml page. When adding a UserControl as a child, there is no way to force it to occupy the entire region occupied by the ItemsControl. The workaround for this is setting the ItemsPanel template property of the ItemsControl so that it internally uses a DockPanel or Grid.

The following code shows a ResourceDictionary file that does this (reference it in your App.xaml file in order for its elements to be referenced):

<Style TargetType="{x:Type ItemsControl}">
 <Setter Property="ItemsPanel">
  <Setter.Value>
   <ItemsPanelTemplate>
    <Grid/>
   <ItemsPanelTemplate>
  </Setter.Value>
 <Setter>
<Style>

Hope this helps.

Well, I’ve heard of this bug before, but never had the unfortunate displeasure of experiencing it. Two days ago I started having problems when opening my Shell.xaml file, on a CWPF-based solution (hence the name, by the way). When I dbl clicked the xaml file, the split designer/xaml tab showed up, started loading the designer part (the usual message appears – “Press ESC to cancel”) and suddenly, VS closed silently, discarding any changes I’ve made that far… Pretty neat huh? This has never happened to me before, and this xaml file had no special code written on it. In fact, as the name implies, it is just a shell for other views to use as canvas:

<Window x:Class="Client.Shell"
	xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
	xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
	xmlns:cal="http://www.codeplex.com/CompositeWPF"
	xmlns:infra="clr-namespace:Client.Infrastructure;assembly=Client.Infrastructure" Title=Test Height="600" Width="1024" WindowState="Maximized">
	<Grid VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Background="LemonChiffon">
		<ItemsControl VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" cal:RegionManager.RegionName="{x:Static infra:RegionNames.AppRegion}" Background="Azure" />
	<Grid>
<Window>

I’ve read one workaround to this, wich was to create a new control or window. Well… The results were disapointing. Creating a new usercontrol or window also infamously crashed my Visual Studio. I started to get really pissed at this. It is really frustrating to work in these conditions.. One thing I’ve tried was to create a user control in another project in the solution, and in this test, everything went normally. Testing this again on the original project, problem remained. So, this is a local project symptom.

I started to wonder what this file had that was so special (or hated) to VS, for it to close so desperately! So I noticed the App.xaml, just sitting there so confortably for so long, and wondered what would happen if I opened it, since it isn’t a visual file and only has Xaml. After clicking it, the xaml appeared in a hurry, no problem there. Then I immediately tested opening my Shell.xaml file again, hoping some internal refresh was made, and, to my surprise, it worked! From that point on, I had no more problems whatsoever.

Let this be a lesson to everyone who experienced this. Still haven’t come up with a reasonable diagnostic to this, but I’ll keep you posted af anything new comes up.

There’s a community project going on at Codeplex called WPF Toolkit that gives you a free themed DataGrid for WPF projects with 7 themes available.

“The WPF Toolkit is a collection of WPF features and components that are being made available outside of the normal .NET Framework ship cycle. The WPF Toolkit not only allows users to get new functionality more quickly, but allows an efficient means for giving feedback to the product team. Many of the features will be released with full source code as well. Over time, some of these features may be moved into the .NET Framework, based on readiness and customer feedback. This is a Community Tech Preview (CTP) Release of the DataGrid control. The download links on this page include a binaries only and a binaries & sources release package…”

Please note that you need to have .NET Framework SP1 installed for the toolkit to function properly.

Composite Application Guidance for WPF 2008 RC1 is now available for download. It has complete source code of the Composite Application Library and some quickstarts for you to get aquainted with this framework.

“The Composite Application Guidance for WPF is designed to help you more easily build enterprise-level Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) client applications. This guidance will help you design and build flexible composite WPF client applications – applications that use loosely coupled, independently evolvable pieces that work together within the overall application.

This release is the first release of composite application guidance for WPF; based on your feedback, this guidance will evolve in future releases. It is marked as a release candidate as its final destintation is MSDN scheduled within a couple weeks. We don’t expect the content to change before going to MSDN.”

Available quickstarts:

Commanding
Event Aggregation
Hello World
Modularity
UI Composition

It also comes with the StockTrader Reference Implementation that uses Unity IoC for Dependency Injection as well as a sparse amount of the Enterprise Library Logging Application Block and Exception Handling Block for infrastrucutre services.

Even though the Composite Application Guidance for WPF comes out as a RC, it isn’t expected to change before the final release.

Check it out here.