Sean Gerety

Meet me at MIX 07

I'm going to MIX 07. This year should be even better than last year. So far the sessions look like there is more meat to them. My only problem will be to choose which sessions to see and which to catch later on the TIVO. If you're going contact me and let me know.

Tag: MIX07

My new box full of Vista with multi-touch gesture support

So I've been quiet for a while, here's a couple of reasons. One is I've got a new box to run Vista. Here's some of the components that I've got in it.
motherboard - http://evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=122-CK-NF68-AR
chip - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115002
video card - http://www.bfgtech.com/8800GTS_640_PCIe.html
case - http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=81800
http://www.antec.com/productImageInside.php?ProdID=81800
memory (2 gigs) - http://www.patriotmem.com/products/detailp.jsp?prodline=5&catid=2&prodgroupid=38&id=581&type=1
power supply - http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=511
DVD burner - http://shop1.outpost.com/product/4367295
Hard Drive - http://www.maxtorsolutions.com/en/catalog/Internal_SATA/ (320 gig )

I was going to look at possibly buying a high end box like the Dell XPS, however I could get the above box for about $1000 less than the Dell. Putting the box together only took a day with the hardest part being shoehorning the power supply in the bottom. Plus, I had to pull the 120 mm fan out of the bottom, however it did go to the middle section and will keep everything nice and cool. The box is pretty quiet, which is nice.

I've installed Vista Ultimate on it and it runs like a champ. The only pain that I encountered was from my GeForce 8800 GTS not having any drivers for Vista. That was definitely a WTF moment. How could a cutting edge card not even have any beta drivers? So that put my Vista Experience Meter at 1.0. No Aero for me.

So I called the support line over at BFG tech (lifetime 24/7 support, which rocks) and talked with the rep who informed me that there are no drivers for Vista. WTFO? However! He did recommend that I check out www.guru3d.com . Kudos to the forum at guru3d.com. They had a driver on the forum for my 8800, which took my Vista Experience level to 5.0. See below.

Another thing is that I've had a Fingerworks keyboard for about 5 years. It's been great and I get all that gesture support that Apple fanboy's are swooning over with the iPhone. I hooked it up to my new Vista box and it worked great right from the start.
So now that I've been playing with it for a week, here's some impressions.
1. Driver support needs to be stronger. (Especially from high end product producers. (cough - Nvidia))
2. Where's my DirectX 10 games? (I love my 360, but this system rocks).
3. I love the look and feel of Vista.
4. The sidebar is nice, but I'm not sure about what happens when people load it up with widgets beyond maybe ten?
5. I love WPF apps on Vista, I pulled down a bunch from www.thirteen23.com and they look great.
6. I've also found out that I'm getting tried of app's that have to run all the time (Quicktime and iTunes?) and lodge themselves in the taskbar. If you have that hard of a time starting up, look at how your app runs. (Sorry that was a UX rant)

Once I get everything setup on my new Vista box, I'll see how Vista runs on my old box. (I'll probably need to throw more RAM at it. We'll see).

Expression Add-in

I know that there is an Add-in contest going on for visual studio, however where I would really like to see one is in the Expression Suite.  I’d like to see a storyboard add-in for both Expression Graphic designer and Expression Interactive Designer.  The storyboard feature could be used to storyboard out the interaction of your applications.  Mock-ups could be created in EGD and then sent to EID for further work.  You would need a view that would show interaction paths (in both products) and allow you to also show an atomic state view (think button behavior onmouseover, etc).  To further the value of this feature you could integrate with Cider and VSTS (what I like to call Visual Studio Team Slayer).  Just think, adding UX into the Software design process.  Huh?  I’m talking about slide 155 from Simon Guest’s TechEd 2006 presentation.  And these storyboard layouts could later be used for documentation, training and requirements (and goals). 

Think of this as a way to paper prototype.  I know that people use everything from Photoshop to PowerPoint to Visio, why not use the Expression tools and create artifacts that you can keep and use? 

Until then you could do this now (somewhat) by creating a new XAML window for each state (or page) and paste them up on a whiteboard.  Have fun.

Tags: WPF | XAML | net3

WPF and Command Centers

WPF and Command Centers?   Yes, WPF and Command Centers.  What a great match.  I got this idea when recently touring CheckFree and seeing their command center.  (They had this really cool glass that you could change from opaque to clear with a remote.  I don't know if that's the product that they used, but it's the same concept.)  I've seen a couple of command centers and they all look like really big versions of what we see on small monitors.  So you can image the text and image quality is pretty rough.  With zooming and the new text technology you could create some really killer apps out there for these big screens.  Plus, there is always a ton of data visualizations could take advantage of the power of data templates in WPF.  And you can use the Nick Thuesen's RangeConverters post to learn how to hide bits when you're looking at your command center app's on a smaller screen.

Tags: WPF | XAML

New CTP's for Expression tools

Ahh, you always know when all the WPF blogs have been quiet for a while that something is in the works.  Looks like my hunch was correct.  Today there's a new CTP for Expression Interactive Designer (aka Sparkle) and Expression Graphic Designer (aka Acrylic).  I'm downloading now and I'll post my findings later.  Btw, if you haven't tried EGD, you should.  Just check out these videos first and have fun.

Tags: XAML | WPF | Expression Interactive Designer | Expression Graphic Designer

Update: Make sure you uninstall Expression Interactive Designer, Expression Graphic Designer (and the XAML exporter install) then before you install the WinFX Beta 2, you should run the "Pre-released WinFX Runtime Components Uninstall Tool".

Nice work Nick

Nick Thuesen just outed his WPF application, the New York Times reader in WPF.  It sounds great, and I assume would deliever a great experience.  Why?  Text in WPF rules.  Easy to read, clean and flows thanks to the FlowDocumentPageViewer.  Between the Times and the BBC it looks like we are going to see news delievered in a whole new way in Vista.  I just wish that they wouldn't wait until Vista (I assume).  This would be cool on a UMPC.  Remember it can handle WPF.

Another nice thing about this is that a newspaper could change how they do classified ads.  They could still have the old style text ads (which are easy to quickly scan) and then when you click on the add you could get some sweet content right there in the ad.  Here's the scenario, you're looking for a 3 bedroom house in the burbs, there's an ad that fits your needs to live in the burbs and has 3 bedrooms.  You click the ad and a video walk tour of the house plays.  That would rock.  And it wouldn't be intrusive like banner ads and it wouldn't be dumb text.  Hey, if someone patents this ad idea, add my name!  

Very nice work Nick.  When is it going to be available?

Sean

Tags: XAML | WPF

WPF Coffee Talk (at a brewery)

I'd like to introduce a way for people to talk about and learn about improving User Experience (UX).  We'll be using Expression Interactive Designer (Sparkle), Visual Studio 2005(Cider) and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF, aka Avalon).  The idea is to have a small group of people discussing technology, tools, challenges and process over coffee.  I want to keep the group small so that we all can talk to each other instead of having someone talk 'at' you for an hour.  The reason for this is unless you're Don Box or Pamela Anderson people usually aren't going to pay attention to you for that long.  
 
We'll be discussing some high level introductory points initially and then as these go on well get more technical complete with ongoing projects.  I've got a project in which I show how I used the various tools.  And here's some of the questions that we'll discuss at the first Coffee Talk.
 
What's the payoff of UX?
How do I use these tools?
Which tool and when do I use it?
What's WPF?  Why should I care?  Why should my boss care?
How does UX fit in my development methodology?

Who should come?  Anyone that's interested, from a student to a CIO. 
Where is it going to be?  At the 5 Seasons Brewery. 
When?  7:00pm on 20 Feb 2006

See you there.

Sean

 

Tags: Expression | UX | XAML

Sparkle is out!

Now you can download Sparkle (aka Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer) January 2006 CTP!   Here's the link for the msi to install Sparkle.  Make sure that you have .NET 2.0 and the January WinFX CTP installed.  You may want to read my steps for installing the January CTP (if you already have the December CTP installed).  Wow, Sparkle and Cider out in January, it going to be a busy month.  Mano says he will be posting a ton of info on his blog, so if you're interested subscribe! 

And on a separate note please, please, please, please, please, please don't call Sparkle the "Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer".  I don't know who names Microsoft products, because it's damn sure not the same person or group that creates the code names. 

How to install the January CTP

Go to Tim Sneath's Blog to get the links to pull down the January CTP bits.

1. Run uninstall tool - vs_uninst_winfx.exe
2. Run the Winfx setup - winfxsetup.exe
3. Uninstall the Dec SDK
4. Uninstall the Micorosoft Command Shell
5. Install the SDK using a tool like  vcdControlTool.exe (just select your .img file)
6. Reboot - this helped me for some reason.  You could skip it.
7. Run vsextwfx.msi

8. Read the WinFXReadme.htm where you'll find lovely tidbits like this one below.

IntelliSense in XAML (inside the XML editor):

The Windows Presentation Foundation and XAML schemas provided with the WinFX SDK are not flawless. Today, many things can compile that the schema may not approve of. We also have things that the schema will approve that will not compile.

The schema will complain about attribute values that are not properly cased. Although type converters are generally not case sensitive, XML schema has limitations. We've chosen to put the matching case with the object model in the schema.
DockPanel.Dock="fill"
will compile, but the schema would prefer this form:
DockPanel.Dock="Fill"
ColumnDefinitions and RowDefinitions as direct children inside a Grid will compile and execute fine, but we'd prefer if you use the following syntax today:
<Grid>
    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
        <ColumnDefinition ... />
        ...
    </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
    <Grid.RowDefinitions>
        <RowDefinition ... />
        ...
    </Grid.RowDefinitions>
    ...
</Grid>
Unfortunately, the schema in this release will complain about both ways. In the future, it will not complain if you use the preferred syntax.
Some elements will complain with the "content model is empty" warning. Many times, however, the compiler will be able to handle it.
If you build a custom element (often a custom control), IntelliSense in the XML editor will not work unless you hand build a .xsd for that control and put that .xsd in %programfiles%\microsoft visual studio 8\xml\schemas\

Happy XAMLing,

Sean

Atlanta Geek Dinner

Next week is the Atlanta Geek Dinner at Five Season's Brewery.  The Geek's will start mulling about at 6 on Thursday 19 Jan of 2006.  I'll be there and if you want to talk about Avalon, Cider, XAML or UX.  Just look for me I'll be the one with the beer.  If you're going please RSVP to the ADOGuy by email.

Sean

Cider (WPF VS.NET designer) Forum

There are a couple of forums available to XAML geeks out there that you should check out. 

The "Cider" forum - The designer for WPF and XAML in Visual Studio.

The "Avalon" forum - A place to discuss and learn about Windows Presentation Foundation (aka "Avalon").

 

Sean

New Edward Tufte Book Announcement

Edward Tufte announced on his forum that his new book Beautiful Evidence will be available sometime in April.  In case you don't know who Tufte is, he is considered the "Da Vinci" of data design.  If you don't all of his books go out and get them now. 

Why is his material important?  Because his books are a study in clarity and common sense when presenting data.  Furthermore WPF and XAML will give us the tools to create his concepts.    

Rounded Edges in XAML

DonXML and I were chatting recently and he was talking about a upcoming post about creating rounded edges with out tables.  One of the nice things about XAML is that this is really easy to do.  Below is a picture of a sample that I'm working on for the TreeView control.  Here I've used two methods to create rounded edges.  One's a hack and one is the correct way to do it.

 

In the hack I use a Rectangle element and a TextBlock together. 

Stroke="Honeydew"  

StrokeThickness="3"

RadiusX="20"

RadiusY="20"

Fill="CadetBlue"

Height="Auto"

Width="Auto"

HorizontalAlignment="Stretch"

VerticalAlig