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Weak Events in WPF 4.5
.NET 4.5 brings with it a generic version of WeakEventManager for WPF developers. In addition to not needing the event-specific subclass, this version also dispenses with the need for listener interfaces.
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Multithreading and WPF 4.5
WPF 4.5 has improved its support for multi-threaded data binding, but the technique is still risky. This report attempts to explain how it works and what’s involved in using it safely.
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New Bing Maps WPF Control Includes Touch Capabilities
The Bing Maps Windows Presentation Foundation Control introduces mapping capabilities to WPF via a native control. It includes support for Microsoft Surface, bringing touch features to Bing Maps.
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Binding Enhancements in WPF 4.5
Though it isn’t in the spotlight any more, WPF still continues to be a key-stone for rich client development on Windows. With full access to the .NET libraries and the underlying operating system, no other HTML or .NET-based UI technology can match it. Recognizing its importance, Microsoft is continuing to invest in improving WPF and especially its binding capabilities.
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Windows 8 Replaces the Win32 API
Windows 8 introduces a new core API called WinRT. This is used to develop Metro style applications using C/C++, .NET, or JavaScript. These applications automatically gain features such as hardware acceleration and advanced power management out of the box. Existing Silverlight and WPF applications can be ported to the new “Native XAML” libraries with minimal effort.
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Extended WPF Toolkit v1.5 Adds Six New Controls
The Extended WPF Toolkit is a compilation of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) controls, utilities, and components not included in the standard WPF Toolkit. The new version 1.5 has six new controls in addition to some control updates and bug fixes.
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Jeremy Likness on Clean Design-Time Friendly ViewModels
There are many ways to handle design-time data in view-models. While some people use complex dependency injection frameworks or inversion of control containers, the simplest method is to just check the DesignerProperties.IsInDesignTool flag. Unfortunately this has the side effect of embedding the design-time data into one’s application. Jeremy Likness offers a couple ways of working around this.
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Surface SDK 2.0 Targets Windows Touch Devices
With Microsoft Surface SDK 2.0 one can write applications for both Surface and Windows Touch devices.
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Microsoft’s Silence is Infuriating .NET Developers
Earlier this month Microsoft unveiled a new touch-centric UI for Windows 8. According to the presentation this new UI allows Windows 8 applications built using just HTML5 and JavaScript. This is great news for web developers looking to do more with the Windows platform, but Microsoft is refusing to say whether or not .NET can also be used for this new application model.
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What to look forward to in WPF vNext
With all the focus on Silverlight, and more recently HTML 5, a lot of people have been wondering about the future of WPF. This in quite understandable, as silence from Microsoft’s press machine often means that the project is on hold, possibly forever. However, it could also mean they aren’t ready to reveal what they are working on.
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Silverlight Status Report
Silverlight on the browser is better than ever. It is getting the same kind of performance improvements seen with HTML 5 while still benefiting from statically typed languages and JIT compilation. So why is Microsoft barely willing to talk about it at MIX?
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WPF on Mono? It is a matter of funding.
Miguel de Icaza, founder of the Mono project, says that support for Windows Presentation Foundation on Mono is possible, but would require funding for 15 to 20 developers over a period of two to three years. As an alternative he proposes using other toolkits, but they too need community support.
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A Case for WinForms
When DevExpress released their roadmap for 2011, WinForms barely got a mention. As a ten year old technology that is basically abandoned by its creator this isn’t too surprising. But what it interesting the amount of negative feedback that generated. A lot of DevExpress’s customers just don’t see WPF or Silverlight as a viable replacement for their major applications.
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WAF and Caliburn: 2 WPF Application Frameworks
WPF Application Framework (WAF) and Caliburn are two open source frameworks providing the foundation to developers to write WPF/Silverlight applications based on the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern using a layered architecture.
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Microsoft Ribbon for WPF
Microsoft has released a new preview of their WPF-based Ribbon control. Though not the final version, it includes a go live license and a copy of the source code. The quality is quite high and it appears that all of the bugs and API design flaws from last year’s preview have been corrected. While the source code is available, the license only permits read-only access for debugging purposes.