I had two goals: make it work and do it well. )įile|New WPF Application and some poking around got me some progress, but I was really trying to make the code clean. Suffice it to say, WPF is a complete re-imagining of how Windows Client Developer should work - hence it's relative inaccessibility to folks like me who are deeply routed in PeekMessage. I understand the general ideas behind WPF and Chris Sells has explained some aspects of it to me. Then I realized that this was a fine opportunity to learn WPF. My wife was watching some horrific movie on Lifetime (seriously, Patrick Swayze was in it and it wasn't Dirty Dancing) so I figured I'd spend a few hours and bang out a little application for the boys. THAT was a great application.) Learning WPF Someone should re-write KidPix for the PC. (Of course, now many of you have shared with me your favorite toddler programs. I always wanted a Windows version of AlphaBaby, and some Googling didn't find me what I wanted, although I knew it must be out there. When I see my kids playing with it with such enthusiasm, I always think of the Incredible Hulk when he says "Hulk! Smash!" so this is " Baby! Smash!" I've got a great free toddler-specific application called AlphaBaby installed on the Mac that makes sounds, shows letters and numbers while ostensibly protecting the machine (the software at least) from the kids. There's two Macs and four PCs in various locations. My 2.5 year old and 6 month olds are constantly smashing on the various computers around the house. WinForms is a managed layer over Win32 Windowing, and not only does Win32 sneak out occasionally in your code, but so does (of course) many other Win32 APIs. Certainly not as much as Raymond Chen, but I devoured Petzold's legendary book, as did we all, and when MFC came out, I understand exactly what it abstracted and what it didn't. I not only understand Win32, but I understand it's historical context and many of the design decisions behind it. We had an educational security application that needed to run in DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, and they wanted to re-use as much code as possible, so I #ifdef'd my way to glory. I worked on internationalizing applications in '95 when thunking (translating between 16 and 32-bit) was all the rage. I cut my teeth when Hello World was 92 lines of C code on Windows 3.0, not counting the dialog resources. It's powerful, but the power isn't immediately discoverable. By right, I mean, most robust, most reliable, most future-proof, most supported, most compatible. Often, there's a half-dozen ways to do something but no way to know which is the right. It's one of those things that is so completely different from how things were done in the past that it's not only hard to just pick up, but it's hard to tell what's the right way to do things. WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) is confusing, to me at least.
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