WinFX
Since I joined Microsoft Belux last year I've been thinking about moving my blog to MSDN. But ever since I didn't really saw the added value of moving my blog as both sites are using the same platform:
CommunityServer. But since a couple of weeks I've heard a lot of very positive feedback on the recently deployed 2.0 version of
CommunityServer that powers the
MSDN and
TechNet blogger sites. So far the experience is far better than on DonNetJunkies. Today I finally decided to move my blog to
http://blogs.msdn.com/davbosch/. I want to thank
Donny for hosting my blog since August 2004.
So please subscribe to my new blog on the MSDN blogs:
Thanks for reading my blog and I hope you will continue to do so at http://blogs.msdn.com/davbosch/default.aspx!
WCF (Windows Communication Foundation / “Indigo”) and WF (Windows Workflow Foundation) have announced Go Live licenses, which allow customers to use the January Go Live releases of WCF and WF in their deployment environments.
More information about the Go Live program is at http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/getthebeta/golive/default.aspx
More information on this Go Live license and technical resources can be found on
Tim Sneath's blog:
The Vista “where to get the beta” site will also point to the WinFX Runtime January CTP.
Ever thought of using WinFX for programming a piano? Well Chris Anderson and Don Box did. Check it out in the Special Holiday Episode III: Connecting People, Programs and Devices Using WinFX.
Don Box and Chris Anderson show how to build real applications that leverage the major components in WinFX. With rich UI, robust communication, and workflow control, they build an application that integrates with various devices laying around Don's home to demonstrate how to use WinFX together.
The Windows Workflow Foundation is one of the core components of WinFX, the next generation .NET Framework that will be available to all users of Windows running Windows Vista, Windows Server 200X, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The Windows Workflow Foundation is an engine and a framework - a set of assemblies System.Workflow and not a product - that can be used across many scenarios:
- workflow within line-of-business applications
- user interface page flow
- document-centric workflow
- human workflow
- composite workflow for service-oriented applications
- business rule-driven workflow
- workflow for systems management
Typically developers and ISVs are very interested in this extensible approach to workflow.
One of the many scenarios where this workflow approach will be very valuable is in Office 12. One of the key requests for the next version of Office was the capability to collaborate on documents using workflow. The great news is that Office 12 uses the Windows Workflow Foundation engine that is embedded in SharePoint host for workflow. This means that the workflow is executed on SharePoint. Of course several prebuilt workflows like review, approval and document expiration will ship with Office 12 Also custom workflows will be supported. There's even a wizard interface in FrontPage 12 that you can use for developing workflow for Office.
The excellent news is that for the professional developers using Visual Studio 2005 there is now the Windows® Workflow Foundation Beta 1.2 for Office "12" (Beta 1). It's important to know that for this wokflow beta you have to use the release versions of .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005, as well as Office "12" (Beta 1). The Windows Workflow Foundation Beta 1.2 runtime components are required for Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services "3.0" (Beta 1), Office "12" servers (Beta 1), and "FrontPage 12" (Beta 1) and the Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation are required for customers who are designing workflows in Visual Studio 2005 and/or require the Windows Workflow Foundation SDK.
Day 3 of the PDC05 was the day that some details on Atlas were unveiled. Check-out Scott Guthrie's lengthy posts on the topic: Atlas Unleashed and Atlas Keynote Walkthrough. In the breakout session PRS420 "ASP.NET: Future Directions for Developing Rich Web Applications with Atlas (Part 2)" Nikhil Kothari discussed the Atlas framework, how to package it into reusable blocks and how to use the server-side programming model (server controls) together with ASP.NET Atlas. The slides and demos are available for download from Nikhil's blog. Check also Dion Hinchcliffe's Blog for an excellent write-up on Atlas.
When looking at Microsoft's Virtual Earth site, Microsoft's Outlook Web Access e-mail client, and Start.com I think that Microsoft did a good job in packaging the different JavaScript libraries into ASP.NET Atlas. However all of this might be not be so easy to use given the amount of code to write and its complexity. This experience will probably be enhanced from now till RTM. Note that the version of ASP.NET Atlas that runs on top of beta 2 of the .NET Framework 2.0 is still a technology preview and won't RTM until next year.
On day 3 I also practiced a number of hands-on labs on the Windows Presentation Foundation and the Windows Workflow Foundation. The labs on WPF and especially the one using Sparkle showed very good the power of XAML and Sparkle for creating compelling user interfaces. Sparkle gives you access to buttons, menus and controls and lets you create animations through the timeline functionality. Sparkle isn't yet publicly available. The crashes experienced while using it (caused by Ctrl-Z or Undo functionality) explain why. But the proctors promised me that they're working on these knonw-issues.
The last day of PDC was a light one with the fun session "WCF + WPF = Magic" delivered by Doug Purdy & Chris Sells. The demo they did to show the power of both foundations normally wouldn't take any longer than 20 or 25 minutes. But these guys managed to get it cover the whole session. I never realized that showing DataBinding in Avalon through Indigo could be so funny ;-)!
Chris Sells has a new book out on "Programming the Windows Presentation Foundation". You can order it here.
PDC05 was just another great PDC. Lots and lots of new technology and deep technical content during all the week. Looking forward to Windows Vista and Office 12 (Server)!
pdc05
This morning PDC 05 was officially kicked off with the keynote of Bill Gates and Jim Allchin. [Watch it here].
Bill Gates started with a fun video on his recruiting efforts and talked about the industry trends and how they influence the Microsoft platform investments. Next talking point was the enhanced user experience: from HTML and the ATLAS framework to a smart client application illustrated by Office 12, Windows Vista and the Windows Presentation Foundation.
After that Chris Caposella, Vice President Information Worker product management group, started demoing Windows Vista. Some of the cool new features like virtual folders, the sidebar, etc that are present in the Windows Vista build being handed-out at PDC, were shown.
Chris also talked about the IE7 parental control and anti-phishing efforts. IE7 cool features shown were:
- quick tabs: tabbed browsing taken to the next level
- easy printing of web pages: shrink the page to the paper format
- RSS support: auto-detect all rss-feeds being present on the page and subscription
Next was an exciting overview of the new Office 12 features and how the Office System has evolved to become a real server system. The best example of this is the Office 12 and SharePoint integration.
Some killing Outlook features were also demoed:
- creating tasks from a message; a uniform task type for all applications.
- play and view PowerPoint slide decks from within the Outlook message preview window
- rss integration in Outlook; subscribe to an rss feed in IE7 and it shows up in Outlook.
- search box integration
- and many more!
Next on stage was Jim Allchin talking about and showing the next step for the Windows Platform. Jim went through the major building blocks that compose Windows Vista:
- UI:
- ATLAS: the Atlas Client Script Framework is an extensible, object-oriented 100% JavaScript client framework that allows you to easily build AJAX-style browser applications with rich UI and connectivity to web services.
- WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere)
- DATA:
- the LINQ Project, .NET integrated query language
- COMMUNICATION:
- Infocard: is the code name for a WinFX component that provides the consistent user experience required by the identity metasystem
- WCF or the Windows Communication Foundation: a Web services technology and unified API that helps developers and organizations overcome the challenges of building connected systems both within and beyond the enterprise
All this brand new stuff was turned into reality by Don Box, Chris Anderson, Scott Guthrie and Anders Hejlsberg. They integrated all of this new technology into an end-to-end scenario. They even leveraged VirtualEarth. Amazing!
All in all I very much liked the keynote and I'm pretty excited on these new technologies. The keynote very well illustrated the deep investments in Windows Vista, Office 12, and other technologies that developers can use to build great applications and solutions that enable “The Next Step” of computing. It should be clear to everyone that the Office developer story becomes very important and that it will remain important in the next years. I know some people who will be very happy with this! ;-)
After the keynote I picked up "the goods" which include the Windows Vista build 5219. This pre-beta2 build was used during the keynote for all demos and I'm being told that it runs pretty stable for being a pre-beta 2 build. Peter is currently installing it ...:-)
After lunch I attended the session "VSTS: Behind the scenes of Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server" which provided an overview of the TFS capabilities. An often requested demo - how to achieve continuous integration in VSTS? - was shown to illustrate the capabilities of TFS.
Second session of the day was the most interesting: "Choosing the right presentation technology: Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Forms, ASP.NET, IE and more.
The session covered all the existing and upcoming technologies - ASP.NET Atlas, WPF, Windows Forms - that could be used to show something on the screen and how they integrate with eachother. Amazing demos too!
Tonight there's the PDC reception and afterwards there's a party at the White Lotus. See you there!
pdc05
[Updated] Some more links on the technologies mentioned above: Atlas, LINQ and the New user interface for Office 12 core applications