I held a presentation at NNUG 25th October in Trondheim. The content of the presentation was XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language) and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). The goal was to give the audience a basic knowledge about the fundamentals of these two technologies. I thought that this might give them a head start on learning more about these technologies. I must admit that the learning curve has been quite steep for me. Maybe I’m just a slow learner.

As I have gotten more hands-on experience with these technologies, my knowledge about them has grown. But there were a few fundamental principles I had overseen during the last couple of months and which are crucial to gain XAML/WPF eureka. So I’ve created a reading list for you XAML/WPF newcomers. I hope you find it useful.  I've also posted a link to the source code from the presentation in the end of this post.

XAML

XAML is based on XML and stands for (eXtensible Markup Languageee). It’s a declarative programming language designed for instantiate and initialize .NET objects. Yes, that’s right – a programming language designed for creating instances of .NET objects and set initial values by using XML syntax.

• Learn what XAML is
• Learn the syntax of XAML
• Understand how it works by instantiate and initialize your custom classes
• Use Markup Extension to extend the XAML language
• Others
  • Terminology
• My XAML bookmarks at del.icio.us

WPF

• Introduction to WPF
• Learn and understand the architecture and the important structures of it
  • WPF Architecture
  • Element Tree
• Properties
  • Dependency Properties
    • Dependency Properties explained
    • The Ins and Outs of Dependency Properties
  • Attached Properties
• Events
  • Routed Events Explained
  • Triggers
  • Triggers 2
• Data Binding
  • Beatrice Costa on Data Binding
  • Code Project Article
  • Data Binding with objects
• Resources
• Styling and Templating
  • Styles and Triggers
• My WPF bookmarks at del.icio.us

5. November Microsoft unveiled the complete Microsoft Sync Framework at Tech-Ed Developer Europe 2007 in Barcelona.

• Interview with Philip Vaughn, Group Program Manager - explains how the Microsoft Sync Framework is designed
• Interview with Francois Ajenstat, Directory of Data and Storage

The reason I’m posting this is that I held a presentation about Sync Services for ADO.NET at the MSDN Live fall 2007 event in Norway. Sync Services for ADO.NET is just a component in this framework that focus on relational data. The Sync Framework has more to offer that just syncing relational tables.

Microsoft Sync Framework is a new framework and a runtime (platform) for adding sync, roaming and offline capabilities into applications. It supports peer-to-peer and client-server scenarios. It’s agnostic of data types, stores and protocols.

The Framework also ships with components for file system sync, SSE (Simple Sharing Extension) and lots of other stuff. File system sync is interesting because it’s a realistic scenario while developing applications with offline capabilities. Let’s say you developing a smart client (win form) that consumes data via web services and documents from a file-share accessible with-in an intranet. Then you can use this feature to sync documents while the client is located inside the intranet. Then the files will be accessible while the client is outside. If the user makes some changes in the files, they will be synced as well. SSE is interesting if you add the protocol to open standard formats such as RSS. Let’s say you building an enterprise application with RSS support. If you enable SSE into the RSS feeds then your clients that use Microsoft sync Framework will get out-of-the-box sync capabilities with these sources. That’s cool!

Another cool thing is the endpoints for synchronization have been loosely coupled. You can use an exchange endpoint to sync with a relation database endpoint. Let’s say you want to sync a person’s calendar from exchange into a relation database on the client.

It’s a shame that I’m not attending Tech-Ed Developers Europe this year.

Resources

• Introduction of the Microsoft Sync Framework
• Rafik Robeal has posted about this in his blog
• Andrei Maksimenka blog
• Microsoft Sync Framework Developer Center