XAML Respite! Orcas CTP is here!

Only a month after developers got a breadth of fresh air in form of the WinFX November 2005 CTP becoming part of the Windows Longhorn Platform SDK, the Visual Studio Extensions/Development Tools for WinFX December 2005 CTP with a Visual designer for XAML is indeed the best New Year gift from Microsoft one could have hoped for. The next generation Visual Studio code-named Orcas would allow developers to visually design Windows' GUI in the typical drag and drop fashion, generating XAML in the background. Download and check it out.

READY!

I agree I've been a bit lazy about User Group events lately. Anyway, Core.NET is Ready to Launch. We would announce the dates for our User Group events at NED, IBA-Karachi, and IBA-Sukkur real soon. Get more information about launch events from the following URL.
http://mea.ineta.org/pakistan/coredotnet/launch/

I intend to demonstrate a hypothetical "State Bank of Pakistan" Web Services Architecture example at this first event on VS 2005 Team Suite for Software Architects and SQL Server 2005. See you there!

Tools of the UX Trade

A little more than ten years ago, when the Internet was introduced in Pakistan for the first time, a large number of people wanting to jump on the bandwagon immediately turned to learning HTML. I remember going to CD shops in 1996 and seeing piles and piles of tutorial CDs for HTML and web page designing. It was difficult to even find a book on HTML at one point because all had been sold out. Little did anyone realize that pretty soon, web page designing would evolve from knowing more than just plain HTML to something more subtle. All web page designers, pretty soon, started using tools like Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia Dreamweaver/Fireworks etc. for all web page designing. HTML became less important; WYSIWYG tools could achieve more and in lesser time.

Fast-forward to 2005, the paradigm for the presentation layer is about to change dramatically. Windows Vista would allow designing of GUIs like never before. At the forefront of this change in paradigm is Microsoft's eXtensible Application Markup Language (XAML) and the programming subsystem/framework called Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), formerly Avalon.

Its natural for anyone wanting to explore WPF to start off with XAML, but keeping in mind what happened to HTML, the focus should turn more towards the designing aspects of the User eXperience and the programming aspects of WPF. I intend to blog about XAML in the coming weeks and months as I delve into this exciting new technology. These days, I have focused a bulk of my attention to the Visual designing tools for XAML, namely Microsoft Expression Acrylic [Download link], Electronic Rain ZAM 3D, and Mobiform Aurora. By the way, Microsoft would come up with 2 more design tools in the not-so-distant future, Microsoft Expression Sparkle and Microsoft Expression Quartz. Stay tuned.

The WinFX Checklist

Many people install WinFX and later realize that its not functioning properly. The following checklist includes all the items and in the order that you need to install for WinFX to work.

0) Visual Studio 2005
1) WinFX Runtime Components 3, Beta 2
2) WinFX SDK
3) Visual Studio Extensions for WinFX
4) Visual Studio Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 1.2

Note: The above checklist is for WinFX November 2005 CTP. (CTPs before September 2005 did not include Windows Workflow Foundation)