Ian and I are writing an Avalon book for O’Reilly and Associates together, but he’s way out in front of me, writing cool stuff like how to get rubber band selection outlines in Avalon. He also starts with a wonderful history of the XOR technique we used to use in Windows and why we no longer need it. In fact, we don’t even need XOR in Windows Forms and GDI+ today, although lots of folks don’t know that.

The key trick in Ian’s implementation is putting a hidden <Rectangle> element into your XAML document so that when it’s time to do the rubber hand outline, you can show it, move it and resize it based on where the mouse is, hiding the Rectangle again when the mouse button is released. This lets Avalon take care of the drawing, making this technique a thing of beauty.

Mitch Walker, the Terrarium guy at MS, posts some tantalizing screen shots from the Longhorn version of Terrarium under development and uses them to discuss the three steps to building skinning support into your Avalon apps. Thanks, Mitch, and when are we going to get Terrarium.Longhorn? : )

Shawn Morrissey (my boss) posted some questions he asked at UPenn’s Wharton School of Business:

• Explain a database to a young child.
• Explain the Internet to your grandparents
• What is your favorite web site? Why? Now improve it.
• Steve Jobs calls and asks you to improve the iPod. Go. (No bonus points for saying, Add WMA support!)
• Youre in a boat with a rock, on a fresh-water lake. You throw the rock into the lake. With respect to the land, what happens to the level of the water in the lake goes up, goes down, stays the same?

He posted a couple of answers, but you’ll have to read his post for them.

Apparently, even though Allegiance wasn't a commercial success for Microsoft, the fan base is very loyal. So loyal, in fact, that MS Research has posted the Allegiance source code to the community. I've never played Allegiance (or heard of it, for that matter), but the trailers on the Allegiance home page made it sound pretty cool. Even cooler is that MS couldn't keep working on the game, but didn't want to leave their fans in the lurch, so the released the source. Is this a thousand points of light or what!?! : )

In this concept video, Carter Maslan, Longhorn evangelist, shows off secure, peer-to-peer networking using pub/sub in Indigo, Longhorn's identity management, organizing data using WinFS metadata relationships, using DRM to keep patient data confidential and some more ClickOnce s/w installation. The application itself shows off a specialist working remotely on a set of real x-rays showing a real case of a person incorrectly sent home having inhaled something he shouldn't and who could have really used a specialist on demand.

As I’ve mentioned, the reason we’re put the Longhorn preview bits out so early is so that we can get feedback at a time when things can still change. So, when you see Brad Abrams, Chris Anderson or any of the other dozens of MS PMs and Architects hanging out on the web ask for feedback on what they can do to make things better, take them up on it! Don’t be shy. If you hate something, tell us so we can change it! If you love something, tell us so we don’t change it!

Even if there isn’t any specific blog entry to which you can reply, start or your or post something to the WinFX newsgroups. We’ve got members of the Longhorn team looking everywhere for your feedback. For example, yesterday Dino posted a theory he had about developer reaction to some particular aspect of the new Longhorn programming model. Rob Relyea saw that post and today he’s soliciting more feedback on XAML compound property syntax and XAML as a whole, the latter specifically becase of Dino’s post.

If you care enough about Longhorn to be running it at this stage, you really should take these guys up on their offers and use the newsgroups. And if you’re afraid that you’re not getting your feedback seen, drop me a line. I can’t guanartee that your feedback will be incorporated, but I can make sure the right folks see it.

Rob Relyea, a Lead PM on the Avalon team, talks about the chief design motivation for XAML, describes the current compound property syntax and then asks if developers would like it to change. Personally, I really like the current compound property syntax, especially given the choices, but Rob doesn't care what I think, he cares what you think. Go tell him.

Dino’s gotten some interesting feedback from his XAML-based articles. Apparently he’s hearing from “real programmers” that don’t want to “recycle themselves as web designers.” This feeling Dino has dubbed “un-programming” and it’s the idea that XAML takes away the need to code.

XAML is most of what’s needed to build trade-show apps, that’s true. But look at your apps today: How much of your web app is HTML and how much is C# or VB.NET? How much of your Windows Forms app is in the InitializeComponent method and how much is code? While XAML can also be used for general-purpose object creation and initialization, as far as the UI of your app is concerned, all XAML does is replace the HTML or InitializeComponent method. The power of what Avalon can do is separate the UI from the code so that trained designers can work on the specifics of the UI, while real developers work on the specifics of handling events and hooking up the business logic and talking to the back-end datastore.

I know that as a Microsoft flunky, the value of my reasoning is now suspect. So don’t listen to me. Listen to Dino:

“XAML is the hot new toy for app developers, and articles inevitably emphasizes that. However, there’s life beyond XAML. And by life here I mean code, managed code, classes, methods, delegates, events and the like. XAML is a shortcut much like ASPX tags in ASP.NET. Believe me, you wouldn’t do much with XAML alone and without smart C# or VB.NET code.

“XAML (and the Longhorn programming style) is not the negation (and let alone the death) of programming.”