DotNetKicks.com - published wpf stories

INotifyPropertyChanged with Compile Time Checking

Wed, 23 May 2012 13:34:58 GMT

neat little tips for wpf

Build a p2p chat application with WPF and ASP.NET Web API

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 15:09:23 GMT

Learn how to build a fully functional WPF p2p (peer-to-peer) chat application with ASP.NET Web API and .NET 4.5

Fade-Trimming TextBlocks in Silverlight and WPF

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:39:14 GMT

Samuel Jack describes how to replace ellipsis of long text with a nice fading effect in WPF and Silverlight.

Microsoft Excel decimal key behavior in WPF

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:14:29 GMT

Article which describes how to get the same behavior for the decimal key as in Microsoft Excel for a WPF application.

Event Handler Memory Leaks, Unwiring Events, and the WeakEventManager

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:47:02 GMT

Many developers don't realize that a common source of memory leaks in .NET applications is the event handler. WPF 4.5 includes built-in support for weak events to help us do the right thing and not eat up all the available memory.

Dynamic Wpf DataGrid Columns using PropertyDescriptors

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:09:59 GMT

WPF DataGrid control used in combination with custom ObervableCollection<dynamic> implementing ITypedList and providing PropertyDescriptors which enables adding columns dynamically at runtime. Columns definitions are also strongly typed and advanced column data generation can be provided by lambda delegates.

Coded UI Tests : WPF Utilities

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:36:37 GMT

I played a lot with Coded UI Tests API on WPF applications these last weeks. It turned out that this is a really powerful framework available to use but that we need to write a lot of code ourselves even for simple things. You may already know the coded ui test utilities of Gautam Goenka available on his blog. On this blog post, I want to introduce a set of complementary helper methods that you can use in your project. The links to the binaries/sources are at the end of the post.

Five Great WPF 3D Nuggets

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:20:42 GMT

Tim Sneath collects together some great posts on doing 3D in WPF.

[WPF] Using Linq to shape data in a CollectionView

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:24:54 GMT

This article describes a way to use Linq to specify the filter, sort and grouping of a WPF CollectionView.

Information on upgrading Kinect Applications to MS SDK Beta 2.

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:46:16 GMT

Introduction Microsoft recently released the Kinect for Windows SDK Beta 2. It contains many enhancements and fixes that can be found here. The only problem with it is that a lot of current demo applications no longer function properly. Today, I'm going to walk you through a typical scenario of upgrading a Kinect application built with Beta 1 to Beta 2. Note: This tutorial covers WPF, but you can use the same techniques for WinForms.

WPF Office Ribbon control

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:23:33 GMT

Shows you how to use the WPF Office ribbon control.

FREE WPF and Silverlight Online Prism Training from PluralSight on Nov

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:41:32 GMT

Blaine Wastell highlights 3 hours of free training materials from PluralSight for Prism available between 12th and 14th November. The training will look at Prism 4's use in WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone applications. (from The Morning Brew)

Understanding basic WinRT Metro Applications and Application Capability

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:33:33 GMT

Windows 8 is already out in Developer Preview form. A new way of building applications in Windows 8 has already been introduced. Lets put up a note to let you know how to build applications for WinRT. In this post you will learn how you can use Capabilities for your application and build your first basic WinRT Metro Applications.

Layout adjustments Snapping and OrientationChanges in Metro Applicatio

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:46:30 GMT

Layout is the most important part of any application. The best design for an application gets more credit and love from the users than applications that are designed bad. Metro style applications runs in full screen. Your application does not include a Title Bar, status bar or anything. Microsoft gave us some of the basic layout guidelines that one needs to follow. Lets talk about them here to make you understand how you should layout your application in Metro Applications to utilize maximum flexibility of it.

Porting a WPF application to Windows8

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 02:08:13 GMT

We take a simple WPF app and try to port it to Windows8. What needs to be changed?

Binding Flagged Enumerations

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:11:33 GMT

Flagged enumerations can present a difficult problem for data binding, this article presents a solution for binding these enumerations to individual CheckBox(s) in a WPF sample application.

WPF 4.5 : Live shaping(filtering, grouping and sorting of collections)

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:20:10 GMT

For each item list used in a WPF application, a collection view is in fact created and used by the controls. This view enables navigation, filtering, grouping and sorting from the XAML or the code. It is a very powerful feature that is offered to the developers since a long time in WPF. In WPF 4.5 as in WPF 4.0 the grouping, sorting and filtering operations are done when the item is added to the collection or when the Refresh method is called. The drawback is that if an item property value involved in one of these operations is updated, then the sorting/grouping/filtering will not be done again. WPF 4.5 introduce a feature called live shaping which shapes the collection view in live. Let's dig a little more this feature. This post is the tenth part of a serie on the WPF 4.5 new features.

[WPF] Creating parameterized styles with attached properties

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 09:25:12 GMT

This article describes a simple technique to create styles that support small variations without duplicating the style.

WPF 4.5 - Part 9 : binding to static properties

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:58:42 GMT

There is two different ways to make a property bindable: implementing INotifyPropertyChanged is the most known solution, the other one is to create a event named PropertyNameChanged. In WPF 4.0 there is no way to create a static property which can be used by a binding with property change notifications. In this post, part of a serie on the WPF 4.5 new features, we'll see how it can now be done!

WPF 4.5 - Part 8 : No more airspace problems - win32 & WPF

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:17:52 GMT

Integrating win 32 component is already possible in WPF 4.0, even in WPF 3.5 but there is the well-know issue : airspace problems. Each render technology belongs to only one airspace only. So when you place Win32 components in your WPF application they behave as black hole for input, render transformation are not (well) applied, etc. With this 4.5 release, the WPF team solves this drawback. In this post more explanation and an example of how it improves developers' life will be gived. This post is a part of a serie on WPF 4.5 new features.

WPF 4.5 - Part 7 : Accessing collections on non-UI Threads

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:09:13 GMT

Here is the seventh (OMG !) post on the WPF 4.5 new features. Collections are a part of every application and their management is maybe the first thing you learn to deal with in WPF. To begin, you put everything on the main(the UI one) thread and it works just fine. After a few time, you realize that it freezes the application UI and that the users usually don't like it. Then you put the collections creation/feeding on another Thread to free the UI's one and you realize that it is not possible because : "This type of CollectionView does not support changes to its SourceCollection from a thread different from the Dispatcher thread". In this post we will discover that this is over with WPF 4.5 (and that you'll love it) !

WPF 4.5 - Part 5 : the new BindingExpression information

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:59:05 GMT

BindingExpression is a useful API when working with Bindings from code. In WPF 4.0 it lacks some information which would have made it even mode helpful. Let's discover what WPF 4.5 brought with him on this class. For the record, this post is a part of a serie about WPF 4.5 new features.

WPF 4.5 - Part 4 : the new Binding's 'Delay' property

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:42:10 GMT

If you read the MSDN page on the new WPF 4.5 features, you'll find it under the label "Automatically updating the source of a data binding". This is more precise and understandable to me to say that a 'Delay' property has been added to the Binding markup extension ! This post is a part of the serie on WPF 4.5 new features. By reading it you'll discover what is the goal of this property, how to use it and some scenario where it is really useful and smart to use it.

Asynchronous data validation in WPF 4.5

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:47:13 GMT

Jonathan Antoine shows us how to do asynchronous data validation in WPF 4.5 using an example application.

New methods of the Dispatcher in WPF 4.5

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:47:13 GMT

Jonathan Antoine shares with us some new methods available with the Dispatcher in WPF 4.5, including the ability to return objects from the Dispatch call and compatibility with the new async Await methods.