Curious what all of the noise about XAML is about? This page in the Longhorn SDK is a complete reference to XAML as of the PDC03.
There are all *kinds* of interesting things to check out in XAML. My personal favorite is the Bind element, which is the tip of the data binding iceberg in Avalon.
Enjoy.
If you're building an Avalon application, the one thing you won't be able to live without is an instance of the MSAvalon.Windows.Application object. It's the core of all Avalon apps and where you should start when digging into Longhorn development.
Check out the complete list (as of the PDC03) of the namespace listings on WinFX in the Longhorn SDK. Not only are old favorites listed, like System.Collections, but there are lots of new friends, like MSAvalon.*
Some of these namesspaces will change name and most of them will change in functionality before they ship, but there's just a treasure-trove of information in them (I'm all excited about digging into System.Speech.Synthesis myself...)
Enjoy.
Jeff Key shows a sample custom shortcut for expansion, but he doesn't show what you get. Digging through C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Whidbey\VC#\ExStencil\expansions.xml shows all *kinds* of interesting pre-defined shortcuts to expand. For example, type the following:
class Foo {
property[TAB]
}
And VS.NET Whidbey expands the text to the following:
class Foo {
private int myVar;
public int MyProperty {
get { return myVar; }
set { myVar = value; }
}
}
And not only that, but the "int", "myVar" and "MyProperty" are really fields in a little ad hoc dialog that VS.NET holds with the programmer to fill in these values one at a time separated by the Tab key. Explaining it is way harder than actually using it. It rocks.
But wait, there's more. Adding custom shortcuts is merely a matter of adding a new XML file of the appropriate form (see the existing ones for examples) and restarting VS.NET, i.e. no need to edit out-of-the-box VS.NET files, just add your own.
Enjoy.
For those of you that don't like writing raw XML if you can help it and that Don and Tim haven't yet converted, there's a Visual Editor for MSBuild. Of course, it's not VS.NET, but what is? : )
Luke wanted to add a new feature to SharpReader (which was just updated today [1]), so he turned to Genghis. Come one, come all. Genghis offers free features for everyone!
BTW, the new feature was toast windows.
[1] http://www.sharpreader.net
I think Don wins the prize for most obfuscated “Hello, World” implementation, but he does drive the point home nicely that XAML has nothing to do with Avalon and everything to do with declaring classes in .NET.
Of course, most folks will think of XAML for declaring Avalon UI, but who knows what fun things will come out of the truth?
