Listening to: Sunshine (Ekto Remix) - Rhian Sheehan

Ok so when it comes to software development I love XSLT… the main reason for it
is that at Provoke it enabled software developers and visual designers to work very
closely together. The strong seperation of business logic and display is magical.
When I saw XAML I was delighted… Rob
Ryla (one of the Avalon guys) has posted the 7
goals of XAML:

• Be XML
• Describe Hierarchy of Objects in a Human Readable/Writable Way
• Provide Page-Based Programming Model
• Be Source Code or Runtime Instructions
• Take Advantage of Strong-Typing
• Be Toolable
• Be Useful for Much More than UI Definitions

After the pain that I have gone through in defending XSLT and that approach to UI
development it does warm my heart to see the above points listed and explained.

Listening to: Miles Away (Age Pryor Remake) - Rhian Sheehan

VS2005 (check)… Avalon CTP (check)… Bouncing Amiga Ball (check)…. Working VS2003
Environment (No)… D’OH!

Need to poke ’round to get VS2003 and IIS playing nicely again… but given that
I am not really going to use any other tool but Word this side of Christmas I think
it can wait.

And yes it is very cool.

Listening to: City of Blinding Lights - U2

Ok… lots of XAML stuff has hit the net since the Avalon CTP. Here’s my round up
(more for my own reference … so I don’t lose the links):

• There is now a XAML
  viewer for Whidbey (src: Longhorn
  Blogs).

• More for the trainspotters… here is a few
  lines of code that show you the visual tree for a XAML form.

• A new
  release of XAMLPad is available.

• This is more of a link that will appeal to the old school… the Amiga ball, in 3D, declared
  in XAML (here’s the original
  post with src).

• Here are a couple of posts (1, 2)
  about hooking up windows forms in XAML.

Listening to: Fast Cars - U2

Because of the way (more accurately the location) that the Express tools look for
templates there are some minor
edits required (Longhorn Blogs) to use
the Avalon CTP.

Listening to: Yahweh - U2

MS has released the Community Technical Preview of Avalon…. grrrr

The best bit is that it works on XP and 2003. Go crazy I say…

• Early
  Avalon Build Is Out, But Not for Longhorn

• AvalonXP is
  King

• 3rd public
  release of Avalon… a few details on the development experience

• Avalon
  November 2004 Community Technical Preview

From simplegeek:

1. This is a “Technology Preview”… translation - rough bits. While I’m willing
   to install this on my home machine, I don’t recommend you put this on your primary
   development machine. It requires installing a beta build of .NET, etc.

2. You also need a pretty beefy machine to run the bits.

3. This build will run on Windows XP

4. This build will not run on PDC or WinHEC Longhorn builds

5. This is not the final API set, XAML spec, or anything else - this is a “Technology
   Preview”

Listening to: No One Like You - Strawpeople

There is a great article
on DevX about building XAML based apps with Xamlon.

Listening to: Love Comes Quickly - Petshop Boys

• SVG -> XAML

• Path Geometries - I

• Path Geometries - II