Adam Kinney's at it again, this time with a sample of changing an Avalon object’s animation properties dynamically to develop an interactive game-like effect. Very cool.

“A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.”
Unknown (to me : )

In this installment of the Longhorn Foghorn, I start my Longhorn implementation of the venerable Windows Solitaire. There is no interesting code yet, but I have explored some of the same decisions any developer will face when starting their first Longhorn application from scratch. Enjoy.

Ryan's at it again, this time with a custom Avalon control that adds spell-checking to the built in TextBox control.

Here. Robert Scoble, Longhorn Evangelist at Microsoft, is interviewed on Microsoft' search engine plans, including those provided in Longhorn by WinFS. Take this with a grain of salt like all advance info on Longhorn, but interesting nonetheless.

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.

Here. 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? : )

Here. 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.