Notes from the Boise .NET User Group, January 2009
Working with the WPF Ribbon
The WPF Ribbon is basically a control that lets you use the Ribbon menu model inside a WPF application. This is a separate download from Microsoft at
Yeah, yeah, yeah. ?I don?t like the ribbon". I can hear it already.
This is a visual model that a lot of people are comfortable working with and re-using this visual paradigm inside your application isn?t a losing bet. People will know how to get around inside your application.
That being said, I am on the on the side of the argument that says we will begin seeing new visual patterns and models as a result of WPF and no one is arguing this qualifies. This is simply the transferal of a Win Form idea into WPF. It is what it is.
Most of us (me, we, me) are not good visual designers for software. There is a science behind a good UI and Mark Miller convinced me I am not that guy. Therefore, I will take all the help I can get applying out my screens. This qualifies.
Lastly, the WPF Ribbon is free as in beer, as long as you aren?t writing a software product that competes with one on Microsoft?s products that also uses the ribbon. That?s fair, I don?t care where you?re from :).
Composite WPF and Silverlight Guidance (Prism)
Elegant Coder Scott Nichols covered Prism for the group. Several people in the room were previous CAB users, and the discussion centered a lot on comparing Prism to CAB.
My favorite quote?
?There is no small app." Some Director sees it and then he shows it to his buddy and then someone calls you from India wanting to install it.?
Characteristics of a Composite Application
- Aggregates data from separate sources into a single interface
- The app WILL grow over time adding more views an functionality in years to come
- Modules that plug into the core application are developed and tested separately from the main application.
- Different people will find a different experience within the application based on their role or other criteria.
Scott explained the event brokering model as simply as I have ever heard and now even I understand it :). I like to think of Prism module-to-module messaging as an internal message bus allowing modules to listen for each other.
IoC Containers 101
Chris Brandsma, the massively popular Elegant Coder (Oh, God. What have I done? Like Chris needs something else to blow up his already ample ego 🙂 ), put on a great talk on IoCs, including Unity and StructureMap. He recently blogged about the how different IoC containers compare and he took his learning from that experience to build out a full talk.
Although the XML configuration story for Unity is currently a bit verbose, Chris Tavares has made let us know that future versions of Unity will address this. (Read the comments in Chris?s post.)
I see how StructureMap?s verbose and declarative language would be a pleasure to work with, although I have not done so myself.
Based on the discussion in the room, I can see that IoC Containers are a much easier sell to people who have struggled the complexities of unit testing and mock objects. The question of ,?Why do I need this?? isn?t readily apparent to enterprise devs without a strong background in TDD.
Hmmm?.. this is fodder for a good talk. ?Why To Program With an IoC Container?.
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