In my last blog post, I did a review of a PDC09 Session “Advanced performance tuning with WPF”. Today, I’m doing a review for another very interesting session “How VS2010 was built with WPF ?”. The video is available here.

Why did Microsoft choose WPF for VS2010 ?

• Technological: prove the capabilities of WPF4
• Architectural
  • Separated presentation
  • Support for long range road map (+10 years)
• Key VS2010 features need it: Editor, Architecture Editor, Parallel tools debugging
• Take an opportunity to give feedback for WPF4: when VS2010 development started, .Net 3.5 SP1 was just shipped and it was the right time to give feedback for the new features and fixes for WPF4.

It is worth noting that VS2010 is a project that is being watched carefully inside Microsoft. We can expect that more Microsoft applications will move to WPF in the next coming years.

What WPF features are used ?

• Declarative UI using XAML
• Databinding
• Styles and templates
• Application Resources
• Interop Win32 (because they did not have the time to rewrite everything using WPF or because features doest not need to use WPF for example de WinForms designer…)
• Integration with the message loop (to deal with particular focus issues)
• New text stack (part of WPF4) based on DirectWrite

Staged approach

• Define data models: a huge diagramming and architectural exercice
• Replace the main window with WPF (only the window not its content !) to start the mix approach (managed/unmanaged, WPF/Hwnds)
• Write new managed components: Window manager, command bar presentation
• Scout with other VS teams
• Test, Test, Test…

What were the challenges ?

• Mixed mode application: native and managed code; WPF and HWNDs (Win32 or WinForms)
• Keep existing extensions working and allow new extensions to take advantage of WPF
• Don’t “stop the train” other teams were working at the same time on the product to add new functionalities
• Text clarity
• Performance
• Focus management

You can watch the session here if you want more detail and demos of what I mention in this post.

Many videos seems to be very interesting and I wish I could have more time to take a look at them. The good news is that the material hosted on Channel9 will be online for a looooong time, so there is absolutely no need to download everything as quickly as possible.

Here is my personal list of the sessions that I watched or I’m going to watch (hoping that next year, I’ll have the luck to watch them in live from L.A :p)

• Under the Hood: Advances in the .NET Type System
• Agile Development with Microsoft Visual Studio
• Visual Studio Debugger Tips & Tricks
• Parallel Programming for Managed Developers with the Next Version of Microsoft Visual Studio
• Panel: The Future of Unit Testing
• WPF: Data-centric Applications Using the DataGrid and Ribbon Controls
• Microsoft Expression Blend: Tips & Tricks
• Microsoft Silverlight, WPF and the Microsoft .NET Framework: Sharing Skills and Code
• WPF Roadmap
• Microsoft .NET Framework: Declarative Programming Using XAML
• WPF: Extensible BitmapEffects, Pixel Shaders, and WPF Graphics Futures

I Paris, next february there will be the TechDays (lot of technical sessions during 3 days). I hope I’ll have the opportunity to go there with the members of .Net team of my company.