I'm making a Windows Store App. Unfortunately it has some performance issues on weaker ARM devices. After reading this article about how to optimize the loading of XAML, I'm interested if there is any tool that will allow me to see a tree of where resources are referenced and/or help me optimize it.
For a visual tree you can use Document Outline in VS. Some other handy XAML tools are like WPF Snoop, or Silverlight Spy, but most of all just good 'ol Expression Blend is a dear friend when working with xaml & templates. Hope this helps.
Related
until now I have used Bootstrap for building my sites.
I heard about Microsoft FAST web-controls, and I want to try it but there is no layout grid.
How am I supposed to do layouting in MS FAST?
I am no web designer, this is why I use bootstrap templates.
I also use Aurelia as my framework of choice to build web apps.
The answer to how are you supposed to do layouting is "there is no how". It's up to you.
What FAST offers is some building blocks (#microsoft/fast-foundation) to allow you to implement your custom design system. So you could go on using bootstrap or turn to material design or another choice.
Here's the link to the info supporting this answer: https://www.fast.design/docs/introduction/#how-can-fast-help-me
Regards.
What are the differences between these two programming choices
I know that the following features are supported by only HTML/Javascript
1. Flyout control
2. Header Menu
3. Rating Control
Do they have any other difference in terms of controls, integrations, connections, deployment?
html/javascript
html5 and js are open web standards. That's why they work (and act) in nearly every browser the same way. That is the reason why you can develop html5 applications for Mac OS and port it without many extra coding to Windows.
Microsoft however wants to have as many Apps inside the market as possible, that's why they made confession to the web developer and implemented a native looking support to html and Javascript. But there are a lot of Javascript functions, that are only supported by IE10 (in fact, nearly every function you can find in the WinJS-File). If you want to port Win 8 Application to any other Operation System, you have to review your code.
A good example for this is the click-eventhandler in WinJS, which has a event.pointerId to identify multitouch. This is a good easy way but not standard.
XAML/C# or VB
XAML is .NET and so it is fixed to this Framework. You cannot easily port a XAML Application to a mac os. Therefor XAML and C# is very good implemented into Visual Studio (Intellisense,Blend and Design-Views) and has some nice features like LINQ and DataBinding. Also the MVVM pattern allows to split up designers and programmers. In my opinion the documentation on msdn is better for XAML and C# than for Html5 and JS. For games there is also a DirectX implementation which is a better choice because of higher performance.
What to choose?
The decision which way to program is really hard. The following Questions should help:
Which programming language are you more familiar with?
IF OOP -> C# and XAML
IF web and prototype based languages -> HTML and JS
Which type of application will you code?
If it's fixed to Win 8 -> XAML and C#
If it should run on more than one platform -> HTML and JS
Do you like Visual Studio?
If yes -> use XAML and C#
If no -> use HTML and JS, you can than
first develop the app with your common IDE and later import it into
visual studio to create the application.
I'm used to winforms development, haven't done any WPF and I'm starting a Silverlight project. I understand xaml and all (and I've got some resources for learning it) but I'm wondering if there's any resources available that shows what controls are used in what kinds of situations.
For instance, if you look at the BusinessApplication template in vs2010, they use a border or a grid in cases where I would think of a panel. Things like that.
I'm looking for more of a 'tips' kind of thing than a tutorial or reference. References normally just say what a control is; not when, where or why you would use a particular control.
These two should help you out...
http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/Silverlight/SampleBrowser/#/?sref=HomePage
http://www.silverlight.net/content/samples/sl4/toolkitcontrolsamples/run/default.html
I am interested in using Xaml with expression blend for creating user interfaces in an application. However, because of the limitations of the target architecture, I cannot use WPF or C#.
So, what I am interested in is in any examples / existing projects or advice from anyone who has experiance of this technology on the use of Xaml in it's "Pure" form as a specification language not tied to WPF.
Specific questions:
1) Is it possible to use Blend + Xaml without the WPF elements, or without C# backing classes?
2) Are there any other implementations of Xaml parsers etc. which use different architectures, and can they work with blend or similar tools.
3) Are there alternative editor / designer tools which can help in this situation?
I am aware of the MyXaml and MycroXaml projects, and have found a lot of resources on the web about Xaml, but 99% of it relates directly to WPF. This is fine for understanding the concepts of Xaml, but doesn't help with the implimentation I need.
Many thanks!
Have you checked out the XAML spec.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/A/6/0A6F7755-9AF5-448B-907D-13985ACCF53E/[MS-XAML].pdf
XAML 2009 and the system.xaml.dll in clr 4.0 is probably going to be a god send for you if you can wait for it.
here is the PDC presentation on it.
http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/TL36/
Now since you said you can't use C#, I am guessing you are not able to use the .net framework?? or using Mono. as far as I know there are no plans to implement XAML support in Mono. So either you would have to write your own XAML parser, and Object graph.
Of course if you are willing to do that you may want to wait for XAML 2009 spec as it adds significant improvements to the xaml language.
Douglas
Does Silverlight help you in anyway?. Now there is an Eclipse plug-in available for you to use Silverlight with eclispe. So you will be able to use Expression blend to design your UI and use Java for the backend coding(Future plan I think). Check out this link for more details. http://www.eclipse4sl.org/
I am using a XAML-based XML document as the core of the new AppMaker v3. I'm currently parsing it in Ruby to generate various output including pure XAML/C# WPF apps.
XAML is very easy to parse especially if you take an XPath approach:
windows = []
REXML::XPath.each(doc, "//Window") do |xml|
windows << Window.new(xml)
end
#... invoking ...
#items = []
xml.each_element("Canvas/*") do |itemXML|
#items << WindowItem.makeItem(itemXML)
end
The real issue, about which we need more information, is what kind of GUI you are trying to generate. The Canvas explicit positional layout in XAML is easy to parse and generate some simple Win32 controls and drawing. If you get into the constraint-based layout like StackPanel then you will have to recreate much WPF behaviour.
If your not using WPF then Xaml as its core is no better than XML really. Xaml has a few flavours but they are essentially addition functionality in the form of libraries. You could use Vanilla Xaml as a base but then you would essentially have to build a parser that reads it and then a framework of code that it essentially maps to. Xaml does not know what a StackPanel is it essentially sends the Textual data off to be compiled by whatever does know what it is, this is the part you would be missing, and its a pretty big part.
I don't mind learning xaml and I'm sure I need to be familiar somewhat, but when I was first trying out Silverlight 1 with javascript it looked like a tremendous amount of overhead. I decided to wait until tools matured and asp.net was added. Well, asp.net has been added with Silverlight 2.0, and now I want to look at using it. But, xaml, to me, still looks like a lot of work for each small step. My experience with Flash seemed a lot more simpler for the graphics side of things (never liked ActionScript that much.) Will $500 for Blend take care of much of my xaml concerns? Can I use Visual Studio Express with the full version of Microsoft Expression Blend?
Do I need Microsoft Expression Studio 2?
Thank you.
Just as a profressional web developer can't lean on Dreamweaver's drag-and-drop to avoid learning HTML, you should climb the XAML learning curve.
Blend will still help, however- just as many started up the HTML curve by doing some drag-and-drop and studying the resulting HTML code. I did some prototyping with Silverlight 1.1 and Blend helped significantly in my understanding of XAML. It helps to have a "real" project to work on, even if it's a proof of concept. Concentrate on the containment paradigm between Canvas and other elements and you'll pick it up quickly enough. I wouldn't worry too much about the MPATH stuff, do rely on the tool for that.
Microsoft Expression Blend takes care of a lot of XAML for you and helps you create animations and setting up triggers (XAML triggers). I would hate to have to do all that by hand coded XAML. I have not used Blend with Visual Studio Express but I believe it will work just fine. Microsoft Expression Blend 2 uses the sln file to open a project.
Expression Blend will not help with databinding. VS2010 promises databinding in its WPF designer, but if you can't wait until then, look to learning some XAML.
Count XAML as one of the many new .NET 3.5 things to learn when working with WPF/Silverlight. I recommend Pro WPF in C# 2008 from APress
Expression Blend give you the ability to draw shapes, paths, Union or diff shapes, create animations (similar to Flash Tweening), wire up simple triggers (like on mouseover play an animation). All with out having to dive into XAML.