The MyTube project (download v0.0001 here) continues on with yet another example of getting your video your way.  Just when I think I'm done, it keeps pulling me back in!  Or something to that effect.

While at the Iowa Code Camp, I was talking to someone about the MyTube code and I casually mentioned that you could take the solution I had built and you could quickly build a WPF client to show Silverlight Streaming content.  I boastfully said I could have it up and running in about 20 minutes.  Well, it took me longer than that and I still didn't put the minimal "fit and finish" work I did on my Silverlight version, but it works.  The thing that slowed me down the most was that my web hoster does not like non-browsers pulling down resources, even something as innocuous as an ATOM feed.  Once I figured out what was going on, I had to add "browser-like" header information to the request coming out of my WPF app.  After that, I wrestled with trying to get a progress indicator working as the video played, but after 10 minutes I punted since it is not as straightforward as it is in Silverlight.  Hopefully that is something that will be fixed soon because the only solution I could find was a royal pain compared to what Silverlight provides out of the box.  WPF and Silverlight are certainly cousins, but there are a few things that are different enough to drive you a bit batty.

If you are interested in the bare bones SLS via WPF app, you can download it here.  

I was at a customer meeting the other day, and we were going over WPF and what it meant for UI design and its value to traditional LOB types of applications.  We covered the usual glitz and glamour that makes WPF fun, but at the end of the day, not a lot of that matters to most LOB developers.  There are a lot of other "under the cover" reasons to use WPF (great databinding being just one example), but the conversation was predominately around the UI and the value of UI. 

Once you get past things like animations, styles, etc., the one concrete example that is often used to demonstrate the value of WPF is data visualization.  WPF certainly provide a great platform for data visualization.  When developers think of data visualization, they typically think of things like graphs, charts, and similar type of visual elements.  The picture at right is an example I took from one of the WPF demos I often show.  It graphs some financial data in a cool looking 3-D bar chart "thingy" and is a pretty good representation of what developers think about when they hear the words "data visualization".  For a lot of apps, that type of data visualization isn't needed so it has a "big whoop" factor when it comes to finding value in WPF.

This is not be surprising to some, but data visualization applies to a lot more than graphs and charts.  I've found that developers don't often think how visualization can be applied to "ordinary" UI design to provide a quantum leap in usability.  The picture at left shows a list box item from another demo I do.  Unlike the traditional item in a list box or drop down box that shows a simple piece of data (like a name), WPF allows us to template that item and visualize the underlying data in a much more informative and useful way.  In this example, we get not only the patient's name, but we also can see his age, medical conditions, and more (and no, I have no idea what all those little colored circles, squares and diamonds are).  From a usability perspective, the end user can now glean important "top line" data points about a given patient without having to actually click the item in order to display additional details in another window.  Another benefit is that this additional  information can help the user distinguish between multiple "John Smith" entries in a listbox because of the added detail.

Another benefit of this type of data visualization is that it frees up screen real estate that would have normally be used to display the detailed information on a given patient.  Granted, the new list box item template takes up more room than the traditional "line of text" items we are used to, but with WPF we can scale, shrink, or rotate those items in useful ways to maximize UI space.  Of course, we can always display some of those details in graphical ways that are easy to consume than traditional text boxes, grids, or what have you.  That is closer to the traditional notion of data visualization, but I do not necessarily mean charts and graphs.  Percentages displayed at color coded icons for quick analysis would be but one example.

So if you have dismissed WPF for you LOB app because you don't need "spinning buttons and bouncing balls", there is a lot more to WPF than just that. 

Magenic will be hosting a great event on using WPF and Silverlight to build next generation UIs.  The event will be at the Microsoft Office in Bloomington, MN on Thursday, April 24th.  For details and registration, click here.  The official promo blurb below:

Join Rockford Lhotka, creator of the popular CSLA .NET framework, and Anthony Handley, user experience specialist at Magenic, as they walk through the process of creating a next generation user experience on top of an n-tier object oriented business layer.  Leveraging their latest project, they’ll show you what is easier and harder than expected.

Featured Products/Topics: Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation

Recommended Audiences: Technology Executives, IT Managers, IT Professionals, CIO, CTO, IT Directors, Solution Architects, Software Developers, Technical Decision Makers, Developers

I interview Rocky Lhotka and Shannon Braun, to luminaries in the Microsoft development world, to discuss their thoughts and impressions of the recent Microsoft MIX Conference held in Las Vegas at the beginning of March.  MIX is Microsoft's premier Next.Web/Web 2.0+ conference that features a "mix" of technology, design, and business topics.

Rocky and Shannon both attended MIX and we spend almost an hour discussing the conference, technology, Silverlight, WPF and more. 

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Shannon Braun has a post about some of the benefits of using WPF for real world business applications.  Shannon has gained a ton of experience working on one of the largest WPF projects that I am aware of.  This post shares a little bit of the value of WPF vs. more traditional approaches.  Good stuff.

I had the chance to sit down with Shannon Braun, a Microsoft MVP, to talk about doing enterprise WPF development in the real world (download here).  Shannon has been working for the past year on a large WPF project at a large customer here in the Twin Cities.  During the podcast, we cover why WPF was used instead of WinForms, developer-designer integration, resources for getting started, and more.  It's an informative 30 minutes and lays a good foundation for future podcasts around WPF.

You can check out Shannon's blog at  www.sysknowlogy.com.  You can also get some good WPF intro info at http://blogs.msdn.com/jfoscoding/articles/765135.aspx and a nice introduction at http://www.davidchappell.com/blog/2006/09/introducing-windows-presentation.

Via Rob Relyea, two good nuggets of knowledge on how to get some cool graphics represented as XAML for use in your WPF or Silverlight applications.  Two great tools for non-designers to get some nice graphic images into their apps - Paste2XAML and Tim Heuer's PDF to XAML workflow (screencast).

An End-to-End Sample Application Illustrating Windows Communication Foundation and .NET Enterprise Technologies This application is an end-to-end sample application for .NET Enterprise Application Server technologies. It is a service-oriented application based on Windows Communication Foundation (.NET 3.0) and ASP.NET, and illustrates many of the .NET enterprise development technologies for building highly scalable, rich "enterprise-connected" applications. It is designed as a benchmark kit to illustrate alternative technologies within .NET and their relative performance. The application offers full interoperability with J2EE and IBM WebSphere's Trade 6.1 sample application. As such, the application offers an excellent opportunity for developers to learn about .NET and building interoperable, service-oriented applications.

Good article an approach to skin WPF apps.

Check out the Acropolis web site for a new sample Expense application showing off the Acropolis Framework.