JAPF

Resharper is an amazing tool for any .Net developers. The latest version 6.1 has been released just a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to share with you a brief overview of the new workflow available in the XAML world !

Visual Studio 2010 introduced 2 new design time properties: d:DesignInstance and d:DesignData. Those properties can be used in order to specify a design time DataContext in order to have more help during the creation of a binding.

For example, when you create a binding using the Property dialog of VS2010 you can browse your DataContext to select the right property (image from this blog post from Karl Shifflet):

Resharper 6.1 is now able to use those metadata in order to improve the experience you have while typing XAML (which I personally do a LOT!). Here is how it works:

• you create a new ViewModel with a simple property (this property has just get/set because we don’t need much more in the context of this post…)

• you setup a binding in your view

At this point the ReSharper magic comes into play…

• ReSharper warns you the DataContext is unknown

• Offer the ability to fix this

• Note that like in C#, you can very easily resolve namespace issues

• Then notice that the warning is gone (the Title property is no longer underlined)

• You can now add a new binding

• You can then ask ReSharper to create the property in your ViewModel

• Choosing the first option will get you to the ViewModel definition

Now that I’ve upgraded my installation to version 6.1, I think this is a must have !

That’s all for today ! Hope it helps

Next Wednesday (November 9th), I’ll be at the Microsoft Days 11 as a member of the Ask The Expert team. I’ll be playing with the Samsung Slate I got at //BUILD/, discussing WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8.

Don’t hesitate to stop by and say hi if you’re coming to this event !

In the last few days I had many questions about the “good” way to run Windows 8 developer preview from a Virtual Environment. It turns out the Windows engineering team wrote a blog post last friday about that.

The popular options are the following:

Functional:

• Hyper-V in Windows 8 Developer Preview
• Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2
• VMware Workstation 8.0 for Windows
• VirtualBox 4.1.2 for Windows

Non-functional:

• Microsoft Virtual PC (all versions)
• Microsoft Virtual Server (all versions)
• Windows 7 XP Mode
• VMWare Workstation 7.x or older

If you’re running Windows 8 developer preview in a virtual environment you probably should also take a look at the Windows 8: Tips and Tricks for mouse/keyboard users article on WinRumors.

Finally if like me you a bit disoriented by the lack of the classic Windows menu in the desktop mode, you should now that if you press the Windows key and start typing using your keyboard it will actually start filtering applications and show you those which match your search.

Enjoy your Windows 8 time !

This blog post is part of my BUILD series.

I’m having a very busy week here in Anaheim ! I’m meeting many new people and had the chance to enjoy the conference from the inside. I’m also playing with this new Windows 8 slate Microsoft gave us ! I’m not going to do a blog post trying to summarize everything because there is just so much to say.I’m going to try to share my point of view on what I’ve seen here.

Our new platform

The original picture shown during the keynote to introduce the new platform was this one:

There has been a lot of confusion about that because of having XAML with C# in the Metro Style Apps without any reference to the CLR… Doug Steven did a pretty great job (blog post is here) by discussing with key people from the engineering team of Microsoft and creates this new more accurate picture:

Here is a quick summary:

• there is only one CLR
• .Net framework 4.5 is used in both Metro apps and Classic apps
• it’s the same MSIL for Metro apps and Classic apps
• in the Metro platform, we have a subset of the .Net framework (for example no OpenFileDialog…)

New opportunities

Before //BUILD we had already many choices to choose our development environment. we now have even more:

• WPF and managed code for classic desktop apps
• Silverlight in a web environment
• Silverlight out of browser
• WinRT + XAML for Metro apps
• WinRT + HTML for Metro apps

I personally think that Silverlight in a web browser has not a great future. Microsoft just announced for example that the immersive version of IE will not run any plugins (so no Silverlight in the Metro UI) and we ‘ll know Microsoft is pushing HTML5 very strongly.

For classic desktop apps we have 2 options: WPF and Silverlight. Each of them has advantages and the choice we’ll have to do will depend on our constraints (deployment, business needs, connectivity…). I think there is room for the 2 platforms there.

For the Metro UI, you can choose between XAML and HTML. Microsoft told us they will keep a good feature parity between the 2 options. If you choose XAML and managed code you’ll be able to leverage a subset of the .Net framework.

I think another important aspect is that Metro will be available on Windows 8 only. Even though this new version of the OS might have a fast deployment rate (thanks to the slates), in many companies I don’t think it will be that fast.This, plus the fact that some LOB apps will not benefit the Metro UI leaves a lot of work to do in the desktop applications world (where we have both WPF and SL)… For WPF, we now have a new version coming in .Net 4.5. You can check out the new stuff here in the documentation.

In my next blog post I’m going to try to go deeper in the new WinRT/XAML world and see how it looks like for us, WPF and Silverlight developers.

This blog post is part of my BUILD series.

The BUILD conference is now only a few days away and we’re all looking forward next week for the keynote! Remember that even though you’re not coming to Anaheim, you’ll be able to follow the keynote live from the www.buildwindows.com website.

In this post, I’ll like to share a couple of interesting links on Windows 8 and the development story coming with it.

Introducing Windows 8

On June 1st, Microsoft did the very first demonstration of the next generation of Windows, internally code-named “Windows 8” (press paper here – YouTube video is available here). The only information related to the development platform was all about HMTL5 (“Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC”). At this point, Microsoft also demonstrated Windows 8 running on an ARM platform.

Revealing Windows 8 features

Late August, Steven Sinofsky, the president of the Windows division started a new blog on MSDN named Building Windows 8. This blog is similar to the one created for Windows 7. The goal is to start a dialog between the Windows team and the rest of the world.

What have been shared so far:

• the copy/paste experience has been improved (details here)
• ability to use ISO and VHD directly from Windows (details here)
• USB 3.0 support (details here)
• Hyper-V will be part of the client version of Windows 8 (details here)
• ribbon in Windows Explorer (details here)
• the Metro UI (as shown in the previous image) will be available side by side the standard desktop Windows. The classic desktop Window is “just another app”.

The last point is particularly important because it show Microsoft is taking a different approach to go to the tablet world. Rather than having a particular OS (limited to tablet related tasks) they choose to offer a completely new UI (based on Metro) AND the full power of the classic desktop OS.

HTML5 and a new UI platform

Without any doubt HTML5 will play a big role in Windows 8. We can expect a new set of tools (maybe an evolution of Expression Blend ?) and libraries to leverage HTML5. Joe Marini (Principal Program Manager at Microsoft for the Web platform on Windows Phone) wrote this on Twitter: “Imagine being able to use standard HTML5/CSS/JS while using platform-specific integration with familiar progressive enhancement techniques.”

Even though we know HTML5 will be a new option for software developer in Windows 8, it will not be the only option. On June 20th, Microsoft splits up its XAML team and they created 3 teams:

• one team working on XAML for Windows
• one team working on XAML for Windows Phone and XBox
• one team working on XAML tools

From this change, we can learn at least 3 things

• XAML will play a big role in Windows 8
• XAML will soon be available on XBox
• XAML will probably be available to native developers (Windows team is mainly using native code)

This is probably enough for stopping the “WPF, Silverlight and XAML technologies are dead” discussion. Moreover, a couple of months ago, we started to see various (unofficial) references to a new UI platform codenamed Jupiter.

We’re not sure what Jupiter is, but Mary-Jo Foley described it as: “a new user interface (UI) library for Windows, built alongside Windows 8. It will be a thin XAML/UI layer on top of Windows application programming interfaces and frameworks for subsystems like graphics, text and input. The idea is Jupiter will bring support for smoother and more fluid animation, rich typography, and new media capabilities to Windows 8 devices”.

Because there is now a XAML team in the Windows division, and because of the strong commitment to native and C++ development lately, we can expect to see the power of XAML available to native code in the Windows 8 world.

Another interesting reading about what the potential development story I Windows is available in Windows 8 for software developers, the Longhorn dream reborn?

If you want to have more details about what we know so far about Windows 8 features, you can check out this post on Winrumors.

Getting ready for the trip (and the last rumors)!

The conference is now 5 days away. I’ll fly from Lyon (France) to London and then from London to Los Angeles on Sunday. On Monday, I’ll be part of the UX workshop organized by Billy Hollis. On Tuesday morning, I’ll be ready to the keynote!

I’ll be live Tweeting during the conference, so don’t forget to follow me @jalpf.

The last rumor suggests that every BUILD attendee might get a Samsun slate running a pre-version of Windows 8… We’ll see next Tuesday!