PDC05

blend modes and the potential of WPF (feature request)

2005-10-11T09:53:00.000+02:00

Ryan Dawson has some interesting thoughts about blend modes and I must say that I always have been missing that feature. Now that Ryan talks about it I feel encouraged to stress that this would be a really awsome and useful feature in WPF.
Not just because of the ability to use it for non-destructive effects. Mainly I think this is a crucial feature because designers are used to it. Every compositing and imaging tool relies on this feature. It would solve one or the other problem, ease the work of the designer and it would be fun to use. Think of a the possibilites and cool effects you would suddenly be able do easily.

Xaml/WPF can also be thought of as a full fledged compositing/imaging ( multimedia authoring) toolset kind of like Adobe AfterEffects, Illustrator, Photoshop - just in the flavor of a programming interface.

If I remember right we have seen a XAML exporter for Adobe AfterEffects shown off at PDC 2003. The fact that a xaml exporter for an application like AfterEffects is possible and actually a practical idea is the best proof of the big potential of WPF. Who knows, some day we might see TV stations use the WPF runtime for the realtime composition of their broadcasted content.

AFAIK blend modes is the only major concept in that area that is missing in WPF to get on par.

XAML exporter for Alias (Autodesk) Maya

2005-10-07T16:37:00.000+02:00

Now this is something I have really been waiting for: The coolest 3D Package gets an exporter for XAML. This is the best news since Alias got bought by Autodesk. It is still pretty basic and limited but you should thank Thomas Goddard for this really helpful plugin. Now I can get all my models into WPF quickly.

Day 1: channel9 guy takes a walk on the walk of fame

2005-09-16T20:51:00.000+02:00

Tuesday after all the PDC sessions where over we took the evening of and the channel9 guy to the walk of fame. We thought since he probally hasn't been there before he might want to see that touristic attraction ...

... And infact he was pretty excited about going there. Especially since he got to see the star of his number one idol ...

... I think he had a great time (notice the smile on his face). For us it was a little bit stressy since he forced us to take tons of pictures in fron of all sorst of sights.

Day -1: The Art of Building a Reusable Class Library

2005-09-15T00:13:00.000+02:00

Te first precon session at Day -2 (2 days before the PDC actually started) ".NET Framework 2.0 - The Smart Client Perspective" with Rockford Lhotka and Billy Hollis was not quite my session. I am not too deep into this smart client development and also I still suffered from that jetlag a little bit. But still they covered ClickOnce in great detail. I have always wanted to have a look at it and also I was able to ask the question I have always wanted to ask: Why does Visual Studio's new class designer not support UML. The answer I got from Mr. Lhotka was something like that not all features of the designer have their representation in the UML standard, so not all that can be done in the class designer can be expressed via UML. Hence it would not make sense to support UML.
So that session hat its moments ...

The precon session of the next day was much more of my taste. It was "The Art of Building a Reusable Class Library". The famous Brad Abrams and Krzysztof Cwalina (I bet he is from Poland originally) did a very interesting (and entertaining) session on how to develop class libraries "correctly".

In the past Microsoft has spent some effort to provide us with design guidlines to develop good reusable classes libraries. I try to stick to them as much as I can and as it makes sense and fxcop has become a good friend of mine.
Brad and Krzysztof mainly took us on a long ride through those guidelines (I counted 93 slides). At the beginning every attendee was handed out a free copy out their new book "Framework Design Guidelines" and it looks like they covered pretty much everything in their session that is in that book. Of course I did not forget to have my book signed by the two authors.

They kicked of the session by mentioning four "Keys of Framework Design:

The Power od Sameness
Framework Design Matters
Tools for Communication
The Pit of Sucess"

My Favorite ones were the first and the last one. "The power of sameness" means that you should provide the users of you classes with patterns, typenames, idioms etc. that they are used to. They should be able to use your classes almost intuitively without having to read the docs first. Brad did a very entertaining comparision to driving a car. Due to the power of sameness one does not need to read the manual to drive a car, even if it is a type of car that he has never driven before. This is a main reason why design guidelines are good. If all the different class libraries follow the same guidlines the developer will be able to take them for a ride without having to learn too much about them first.

"The pit of sucess" my secound favorite key is directly reltated to that. Your Framework should be designed in way that using it is like falling into a pit (rather than climbing a mountain). You should "make the simple things simple and the hard things possible" so your users "fall into sucess" automatically.

Allthough I came to L.A. for the WPF story, I must say that this session was one of my favorites, also because we had the whole day to get into to topic real deep and talk about it in great detail and because Brad and Krzysztof (I thank good for copy&paste !) really managed to get the topic across in a very fun and entertaining way. Only one session was more entertaining (but less informative ! ): " PRS334 Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon") + Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo") = Magic " by Chris Sells and Doug Purdy. They really did hellofa comedyshow there.

Tags: PDC05

I fell in love with the channel9 area

2005-09-13T01:08:00.000+02:00

As it turns out the channel9 area at the PDC is a really cool place to hang out. It has already become my favorite place to relax. Allthough its beanbags are very comfortable they can not outperform those big black rockingchairs. I even managed to fall asleep in it once.

Peter (right) and I (left) were the first ones who checked out the channel9 area. In the background they are still building the booths of the expo hall. It was day -2 (1st precon day) early in the morning.

As it turned out later we didn't get much rest in those beanbags. As soon as precon was over and PDC started. There was not a free minute. There were so many people too meet, Microsofties to question, sessions to attend and so on.

Tags: PDC05

blogging with the jetlag

2005-09-11T14:31:00.000+02:00

Yes! I have found my way to L.A. It really was an awful flight. If I may give you an advice: Dont fly with Air India ! You'll get to see cheap Bollywood movies without a break on old faded monitors, the flight attendees look at you as if you were a criminal (if they show up at all - I was offered two drinks during the 11h flight) and the Boing 747 interior made me feel like I am in the 70ies (with the exception that it probally looked much less used and "worn out" back then).

It is 6 a.m. now and I am lying in my kingsize bed in my 60 square meter room in the Wilshire Grand and can not sleep anymore - jetlag at its best!

Arriving at the hotel room really made me forget about the flight. Microsoft sure knows how to make their "disciples" happy! The room is hughe, it has an awsome view, two bathrooms (I really needed that !) and when I got here there was a big fruit and cheese plate waiting for me. But the best thing, there is free WLAN throughout the entire hotel. So I can stay on msn messenger whereever I go :) As it turns out Casey's "room" is even crazier, it has a grand piano. Check out his blog for some stunning pics.

Infact I am writing this blogentry using my new Windows Mobile 5 reallysmartphone T-Mobile MDA Pro (aka HTC Universial). I talked about this cool gadget purchase on channel9 see some pics here Peter has his room right next to me and in 3 hours we will be meeting for continental breakfast an then we are off to precon "the smart client perspective".
Stay tuned folks !

Tags: PDC05

My Schedule for the PDC

2005-09-03T14:02:00.000+02:00

I have finally chosen what sessions I will be attending at the PDC. As I said I will concentrate on presentation(WPF) and WinFX/win32 interop. I don't know about the BoF sessions yet beacuse they have not yet been elected. I will add them as soon as I know. So here is my schedule:

Sunday, September 11
9:00 AM - 10:00 PM
Continental Breakfast
10:00 AM - 5:45 PM
PreCon: .NET Framework 2.0: The Smart Client Perspective - Billy Hollis, Rocky Lhotka

Monday, September 12
9:00 AM - 10:00 PM
Continental Breakfast
10:00 AM - 5:45 PM
PreCon: Framework Design Guidelines: The Art of Building a Reusable Class Library - Brad Abrams, Krzysztof Cwalina
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Birds of a Feather

Tuesday, September 13
7:45 AM - 8:30 AM
Continental Breakfast
8:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Keynotes
11:45 AM - 12:30 PM
FUNL02 Lap around the WinFX and Win32 SDKs [515 AB] - Brent Rector
1:00 PM - 2:15 PM
FUN200 Windows Vista: Taking Advantage of Windows Vista in Your Application [Hall EF] - Chris Jones
2:45 PM - 4:00 PM
PRS200 - Choosing the Right Presentation Technology: Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon"), Windows Forms, ASP.NET, IE, and More [Hall EF] - Michael Wallent
4:15 PM - 5:30 PM
PRS305 - Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon"): A Lap around the Windows Presentation Foundation [Hall EF] - Rob Relyea
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Expo Hall Reception
9:00 PM - 12:00 AM
Birds of a Feather

Wednesday, September 14
7:00 AM - 8:30 AM
Continental Breakfast
8:30 AM - 10:30 PM
General Session
11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
PRS317 - Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon"): Beautiful Code, Beautiful Design - Applications Your Designers Can Work With [Hall F] - Robert Ingebretsen
12:30 PM - 1:15 PM
FUNL04 - Tips & Tricks: Writing Performant Managed Code [Hall E] - Rico Mariani
1:45 PM - 3:00 PM
PRS309 - Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon"): Overview of Windows Vista Graphics [502 AB] - Pablo Fernicola
3:15 PM - 4:30 PM
PRS311 - Direct 3D Part 1: Utilizing the Maximum Power of the GPU in Your Graphic-Intensive Windows Vista ("Longhorn") Application [406 AB] - Rudolph Balaz
5:00 PM - 6:15 PM
PRS313 - Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon"): Integrating with Your Win32/MFC Application [409 AB] - Nick Kramer
7:00 AM - 11:30 PM
Attendee Party – Universal Studios

Thursday, September 15
7:00 AM - 8:30 AM
Continental Breakfast
8:30 AM - 9:30 AM
General Session
10:00 AM - 11:15 AM
ILL02 - Enhancing Your Win32 Application for Windows Vista [Labs] - Ahsan Kabir, Bob Arnson
11:30 AM - 12:45 PM
TLN213 - Future Directions for Building Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon") Interfaces [502 AB] - Peter Faraday
1:00 PM - 1:45 PM
FUNL05 - Tips & Tricks: Common Memory Management Pitfalls and Profiling for Managed Applications [Hall E] - Rico Mariani
2:15 PM - 3:30 PM
PRS223 - Getting Users to Fall in Love with Your Software: 2005 Edition [Hall F] - Hillel Cooperman
3:45 PM - 5:00 PM
PRS325 - Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon"): Advanced Graphics (Part 1)—2D, 3D and Text [515 AB] - Kam VedBrat
5:15 PM - 6:30 PM
FUN318 - Windows Vista: Using Win32/WinFX Integration to Light-Up on Windows Vista: A Case Study [Petree Hall] - Adam Nathan
6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Ask the Experts
9:00 PM - 12:00 AM
Birds of a Feather

Friday, September 16
7:00 AM - 8:30 AM
Continental Breakfast
8:30 AM - 9:45 AM
PRS330 - Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon"): Creating Rich Content Experiences in Your Applications [402 AB] - Filipe Fortes
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM
PRS431 - Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon"): Building Custom Controls [402 AB] - Kevin Moore
12:00 PM - 12:45 PM
PRSL03 - Ten Amazing Ways to Speech-Enable Your Application [502 AB] - Phillip Schmid, Robert Brown
1:00 PM - 2:15 PM
PRS435 - Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon"): Going Under the Hood to Understand the Architecture [403 AB] - Chris Anderson, Greg Schechter, Jeff Bogdan

I will be staying at Wilshire Grand

2005-09-01T17:37:00.000+02:00

Micheal made it official now: I will be staying at the Wilshire Grand. I already booked my fight too. I will be arriving at LAX at 16:35 (10th) with Air India (*scratching my head*). I'll leave 16th evening so I won't have to pay for another night myself.

My fellow contestwinner Peter Jausovec will be staying at the same hotel and will arrive at the same time as me (party is preassigned). The third companion in our little winnergang Casey Chesnut is staying at Millennium Biltmore Hotel.

ZMan (Andy Dunn) will be attending the PDC too and he proposed a really hot and interesting BOF session about (Managed) DirectX:

DirectX - Graphics and Games
How does DirectX fit into the world of Windows Graphics Framework (Avalon) and Vista (Longhorn)? What about DirectX.Next? Can you really write games in managed code? Do you have a problem you need to ask about? Come and talk about the past, present and future of DirectX both managed and native.

I strongly recommend this session and you should definitely all vote for it. I will be there, Casey will be there and of course the incredible ZMan. Three reasons why that session will really rock ! Vote now !

book

2005-08-29T18:54:00.000+02:00

Some of you probably might remember that Video with the Clear Type team on channel9. They showed off this very nice looking book: "Now read this - The Microsoft Clear Type Font Collection". As soon as I saw that video I asked them for a copy and forgot about it. Today I had this book in my snailmailbox. What a pleasant suprise.

The book starts with a introduction by Bill Hill (I just love his well-styled facehair) followed by a explanation of cleartype and then presents new cleartype fonts designer for Windows Vista (Constantia, Cambria, Corbel, Candara, Calibri, Consolas, Meiryo,). If I understood this right some really famous artists participated in the design of those fonts.

The book is beatutifully layouted and the pages are decorated with samples of fonts. It really meets the eye. For more information visit the Microsoft ClearType Site.

books books books

2005-08-29T09:18:00.000+02:00

There have been announced several cool new books (in time for the PDC). I hope I will be able to buy them at the PDC (and get them signed by the authors). I thought I'd share the list here. Feel free to give me hints about other cool new books.

C++/Cli Essentials by Stanley B. Lippman, Addison Wesley
Programming Avalon by Ian Griffiths and Chris Sells, O'Reilly
Programming Avalon by Chris Anderson (probably not in time for the PDC. Does anyone have more info on this book? Who is going to be the publisher? When will it be published?)
Programming INDIGO by David Pallmann, Microsoft Press
Windows Longhorn and WinFX Developer Beta Preview by Jean-Luc David, Hungry Minds Inc,U.S. (no clue what happend to this book)
Framework Design Guidelines : Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries by Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams, Addison-Wesley Professional

Will I be able to see the HOLLYWOOD sign form the convention center ?

2005-08-20T23:54:00.000+02:00

According to my calculations it could be possible to see the HOLLYWOOD sign from the L.A. convention center where the PDC is taking place. Here is the virtual earth map with both places marked. [1] is the convention center and [2] is not far from the sign. (I was not able to mark the sign directly)

According to this image the area is totally flat and the hills can be seen in the distance.

The sign should be somewhere on the left outside the picture. It is going ot be be very far away and the infamous L.A. smog might blur it but it should be possible to see it.

I guess we can only make sure when I am there.

My coolest birthday present ever! (with great victory comes great responsibility)

2005-08-20T20:54:00.000+02:00

It was yesterday - I just came back from my birthday party (a picknick at the Elbe with just me and my wife) when I had this in my mail:

Channel 9 user email: PDC05 Blogging Contest
Please reply to this email regarding your entry in the Blog'N My Way to PDC05 Contest.

Thank you,

Michael Lehman | PDC05 Contest Coordinator

Of course I knew what this meant right away and I replied. The next mail made it official:

Yes...

****************************
I am please to inform you that
YOU ARE THE WINNER
of the Blog'n My Way To PDC05 Contest!
****************************

Thank you for this übercool birthday present! I did not expect this at all (well, to be honest, I kept my fingers crossed desperately all the time and the 4 days after the 15th have been agonising).

With great victory comes great responsibility. I am hoping to provide you with some high quality blogging over the next weeks. I promise I'll try hard. Don't be too harsh with me though. This is my first real blog and English is not my native language. Please ignore little orthographic mistakes. Please do not ingore textual/technical mistakes. If I mix up facts or you have the feeling that I misunderstood something or missed the point, please don't hesitate to contact me.

So what am I going to do next ?

First of I all I will tell my boss that I was sucessful and that I won't be at my desk during Sept 13 - 16 (maybe 12-17 :) )
I will try to get the tools I need for comfortable blogging. (A camera and a laptop). I hope I will be able to borrow it. I don't want to have to rely on the PDCPCs.
I will wait for the vouchers to arrive and for Michael Lehman giving me some more info. There are some open questions: Will I have to book the hotel myself? Because if I do, time is working against me. I was told that it is not that easy anymore to find a place to stay.
As soon as the vouchers are here I will book a flight.
I will plan and concretise my schedule for the PDC. Update 2 of my list of session is already out of date. There are some new interesting session I'd better not miss.

This is all very exciting and virgin soil (can I say that in english ?) for me. Stay tuned !

My sessions preferences for PDC (update 2)

2005-08-15T23:09:00.000+02:00

As I promised, here is the list of session I would like to attend at PDC 2005.

Sessions I really must attend and you will find reviews about on this blog:

PRS334 - Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon") + Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo") = Magic - Chris Sells, Doug Purdy
PRS319 - Building Applications That Look Great in Windows Vista ("Longhorn"): The AERO Experience - Jeff Pettiross, Tjeerd Hoek
PRS321 - Windows Forms: Integrating Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon") - Mike Henderlight
PRS311 - WGF Part 1: Utilizing the Maximum Power of the GPU in Your Graphic-Intensive Windows Vista ("Longhorn") Application - Rudolph Balaz
PRS416 - WGF Part 2: Deep Dive into Building Real Time Graphics Applications Using Windows Graphics Foundation - Rudolph Balaz
PRS305 - WPF: A Lap around the Windows Presentation Foundation - Rob Relyea
PRS325 - WPF: Advanced Graphics (Part 1)—2D, 3D and Text - Kam VedBrat
PRS328 - WPF: Advanced Graphics (Part 2)—Animations, Imaging, Effects and Media - Greg Schecter
PRS333 - WPF: Advances in Document Workflow—Securing, Viewing, and Printing Your Content - Gregg Brown
PRS317 - WPF: Beautiful Code, Beautiful Design - Applications Your Designers Can Work With - Robert Ingebretsen
PRS431 - WPF: Building Custom Controls - Kevin Moore
PRS329 - WPF: Building User Interface with Advanced Layout Techniques - Henry Hahn
PRS330 - WPF: Creating Rich Content Experiences in Your Applications - Fil Fortes
PRS435 - WPF: Going Under the Hood To Understand the Architecture - Chris Anderson
PRS313- WPF: Integrating with Your Win32/MFC Application - Nick Kramer
PRS327 - WPF: Optimizing Applications for Performance - Alexander Stevenson
PRS309 - WPF: Overview of Windows Vista ("Longhorn") Graphics - Pablo Fernicola
PRS314 - WPF: Using Application Services - Lauren Lavoie
PRS324 - WPF: Using Data in Your Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon") Applications: XML, Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"), ADO.NET and More - Namita Gupta
TLN213 - Future Directions for Building Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon") Interfaces - Peter Faraday
TLN319 - WPF: Adding Rich Design-Time Support to Your Custom Controls - Mark Boulter
FUN412 - Five Things Every Win32 Developer Should Know - Raymond Chen
FUN318 - Windows Vista: A Case Study Using Win32/WinFX Integration to Light-Up Your Win32 Application on Windows Vista - Adam Nathan
FUN417 - Windows Vista: Under the Hood of the Operating System—System Internals and Your Application - Karthik Thirumalai, Richard Ward
PRS200 - Choosing the Right Presentation Technology: Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon"), Windows Forms, ASP.NET, IE, and More - Arik Cohen, Michael Wallent
PRS310 - Windows Vista: Extending Explorer by Providing Metadata, Rich Previews and Thumbnails for Your File Types - Kerem Karatal, Marc Miller
PRS315 - Windows Vista Tablet PC: Advances in Creating Ink Enabled Applications - Jamie Wakeam, Shawn Van Ness

Sessions that I would like to see as well (I will attend them if time and my personal energy resources allow; also I might not review them as detailed as the other ones):

DAT304 - Building an XML File Format for Your Application—Just Like ''Metro'' and ''Office 12'' - Jesse McGatha
DAT320 - Windows Vista: Building RSS Enabled Applications - Amar Gandhi
DAT310 - "WinFS" Future Directions: Building Data Centric Applications Using Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon") and Windows Forms - Ramesh Nagarajan
TLN410 - CLR: Writing a Dynamic Language Compiler in One Hour - Joe Duffy, Joel Pobar
COM202 - Windows Communications Foundation ("Indigo"): A Lap around the Windows Communications Foundation - Omri Gazitt
FUN034 - Windows Vista & "Longhorn" Server: Improving Reliability with the New System.Transactions Classes, File System and Registry Transactions - Dana Groff, Jim Johnson
COM319 - Windows Vista: Integrating People Near Me (PNM) Into Your P2P Application - Ravi Rao
COM214 - "InfoCard": An Overview - Bill Barnes, John Shewchuk
TLN301 - VSTS: Behind the Scenes of Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server - Brian Harry
TLN309 - C++: Future Directions in Language Innovation - Herb Sutter
TLN402 - MSBuild: Architecting a Customized Build System - Rajeev Goel

Trying to blog my way to the PDC

2005-08-01T19:22:00.000+02:00

So this is my official attempt to blog my way to the PDC 2005. Why do I want to go so badly? Here's the story.
I am currently doing my master thesis in multimedia computer science (probably a bad translation ...) here in Germany. Fortunately I have the chance to do it on something I have been exited about since I first heard of it: Avalon (now WPF). So for the past months I have done some heavy research on it and I literally absorbed everything that could be found throughout the internet about it and have also started to develop little example applications.
Within my research I have two major fields of interest:

The first is to get an overall picture of the capabilities of the WPF and how it can be used to create better applications. This includes performance investigations as well as the development of various prototypes that leverage all the different aspects of the WPF API. I am also covering the possibilities and restrictions of WPF for multimedia authoring. How can I use WPF to edit and save out multimedial content?
The second part concentrates on how a software company can use the power of WPF within their products (existing or new) without having to throw their long grown win32 codebase overboard. So I am investigating all the interop possibilities here.

I think the PDC is the perfect place and opportunity to get new valuable and fruitful input and to discuss my experiences with fellow attendees and hopefully to give those developers behind the APIs some valuable firsthand feedback in real eye-to-eye conversations.

So how would the community benefit? Well, I have set up this pretty little blog here. If I go to the PDC I will report about my experiences at the PDC in great detail. That means I will review the sessions I have seen and the discussions I had and reflect that on my personal knowledgebase within the above mentioned region of interest. I will also keep you informed about who I met, how I spent the day and how the food and the parties were (Channel9Guy and a Digicam will come along - so stay tuned for hot imagery on this blog).

As for the sessions, I already have a concrete idea on which ones I would like to attend. I will post a list of them soon (500 words, baby !). I selected sessions that relate to my research and to where my competences lie. However I might not be able to see all of them but you can rest assured that I won’t miss any of them if they don’t overlap.

Since I have this odd hobby and to stress that I really would love to go, I made this little movie trailer for you to download and watch. I modelled, animated, composed and played everything myself. If you liked it and/or would like to see me going to the PDC click the red flair at the top of this article.

Mobile Version | 1,4 MB
Low Quality | 2,5 MB
High Quality | 8,2 MB

Ok now !

2005-07-30T21:28:00.000+02:00

Allright ! I go this blog up and running. Once I got my little suprise ready, I am hoping to blog my way to the PDC. So stay tuned and don't miss the surprise !