I'm a french beginner dev and I need to draw charts using WPF and IronPython. I'm coding with MVS2010 and I didn't find any help on Google.
Does anybody have an idea ? Something to help me ?
Thanks all,
Ben
Charting is difficult, and it's usually best to rely on a tried-and-true library like ChartFX and invest your time and energy into solving real business problems.
If you have difficulty convincing your management to purchase the library, divide the cost by your weekly pay and think about if it's possible to build something better in that many weeks. More than likely it's not.
If you're just learning, there are also some open source options like VISIFire.
Related
Today i was doing a POC using MVVM Light Toolkit.
My Senoir asked why do we have to use MVVM light toolkit. He said we have to explain it to client that why do we want to use it.
I tried to suggest things like Built in classes for Commands ,Messages but i dont thinks it was strong enough.
What are the Pros and Cons of using this. Is it not good or its not flexible enough...
I would really appreciate of your help on this.... i know that application can be built without it as well so why to use a framework???
Money, money, money. Time is money. If you save time with toolkits that are free(or not free, but you can save the time to write them) you save money.
I think the same kind of question was asked few minutes ago
Custom MVVM implementation Vs. PRISM
Please, try to search just a bit before posting this kind of questions ;)
I'm going to write a rather big/complex WinForm application such as Paint.NET, SharpDevelop, etc. I think one of the most important things to build such an application is to structure the project properly to increase maintainability and control the complexity.
So what kind of patterns or practices show I use? Any blog posts, papers, open source projects are welcomed. I'm trying to learn something from SharpDevelop but it's rather huge for me to step into.
PS: I'm an experienced programmer formerly targeting to web developement(asp.net, rails, etc.). So I know some design principles and how to use them when implement business logics. Maybe I really need now is a sample to get started with a WinForm application so that I can realize how to handle the menus, controls and others. I've learnt something about the MVP pattern but still unconfident to start a large/complex application.
For big projects the methodology and the tools you are using are equally as important as the architectural design. You need to set up a source control system (like SVN) from day one. Also, it is very good to have a standard build procedure and perform builds in a daily basis. The build procedure should include running all tests, which you should also put some effort in implementing from the start.
Regarding the structure, I believe the single most important thing is to divide your project into building blocks with mimimal dependecies on each other. This way you will be able to think about one small part of the system at the same time and not have to face the full complexity of it. It will also help delegate some work to a fellow programmer, if you have this chance.
In order to get started, I recommend that you implement first something minimal as quick as possible. Then work to make it better and add functionality. This will keep you motivated as you will have something concrete to work with. It will also help you identify major design flaws and important issues early enough to correct them.
This is a good beginners guide from Microsoft itself:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/beginner/default.aspx
check the Windows track there.
After mastering basics - and since you are an experienced developer - you can check this book "patterns & practices Application Architecture Guide 2.0" from Microsoft also.
I would imagine that many of the techniques that make for successful web projects will translate to Winforms projects. Start small and grow the application incrementally. Try to keep the entire application building/working while you add features one at a time.
Currently as my job profile i am more working on asp .net application but i also wanted to have my hands on silverlight application. so, i just decided to build one silverlight 4 application in my spare time and on weekends.
We are having a team of around 4 people. We also tried for commercial application but as we can only develop it in our available time we can not commit on timeline as well as we people are new to SL, so first we need to learn concept and implement it. (Though we know the concept of binding, commanding,templates etc.)
Now i just thought to work on project like creating a social networking site in SL 4
having facilities like forum, blogs, calander, task, dashboard etc.
We want to use features like .Net RIA Service, Entity Framework, MVVM pattern, SL 4.
Objective here is to learn new concepts as well as to get some good project experince in silverlight.
Now,
what you people suggest is it a good idea ?
If yes then the project selected is correct or you suggest some other project ?
Any pattern or technology related suggestions ?
This is quite a vague set of questions but I'll attempt to give my 2 pennies worth of advice.
As a learning project this is as good an idea as any to get going with. As a commercial idea it probably isn't such a good one due to there not being any niche in your product. It has all already been done, and been done successfully by the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Developing any kind of social media site is incredibly difficult as the market is already fairly saturated. As I said though, as a learning project it's quite nice as you can just borrow concepts and ideas from other sites and you can concentrate on you main goals of gaining knowledge in the various technologies.
Whatever you decide to do I'd say split the project up into much smaller components rather than having the end goal in sight. Try to take more of an agile approach by setting yourself 2-3 week targets. It should help keep the momentum going. My experience is that learning projects tend to die a death as people get bored of the concept and lose motivation to do it. By keeping the tasks small you get to see small results often. This should help keep you motivated as you move from requirement to requirement.
Personally I think setting up personal projects and goals like this are a great way of learning new technologies - good for you!! :-)
From a tooling perspective it sounds like SL4 is an ideal route to follow. This is highly likely to be released in early 2010 and has some awesome new features compared to SL3. Would also recommend using VS2010 and WCF RIA Service too.
From a code sharing POV have you considered hosting your project on Codeplex? This will give you a hosted TFS server to manage your source code in a distributed way. This is bound to save you some big bucks.
As far as document management is concerned Google Docs are certainly worth a look (as is Google Sites as a really easy to set up (albeit simple) project management portal).
Finally, I can't recommend learning SketchFlow highly enough. As a prototyping tool for silverlight it is really, really cool. Take a look at the PDC video for a great kick start on this.
Good luck :-)
For a developpeur who as to do a project with WPF or Silverlight (xaml code), is it trial to learn some design (basics) and to handle blend? Beacause in France there isn't much blend professional (compare to photoshop users) and the price/day of a blend designer is very high.
What I am sure is there i ain't no artist, but it could be interesting/fun to learn something that different then pure code. So my question is mainly for designer or developpers that had to learn some design, is it that hard for a custom design?
The principle of design are not difficult to learn but they're not always easy to put into practice and that's why it's considered an art rather than a skill. Certainly WPF/Silverlight is a designers dream as far as desktop UI is concerned since it's VERY flexible so you'll find few restrictions on what is possible when compared to other technologies. Blend works well with them too and it's not that tough to learn.
To start learning design as a developer, i'd suggest you take in as much material as possible and pratice,..a LOT. Read design blogs like the ones here and read plenty of books. Some good starter books are The Non Designers Design Book, The Design Of Everyday Things and Don't Make Me Think. I know they all really help when i started to look into UI and interaction design.
Hope that helps.
A great way to find your way in the design world is the Principles of Design Series on Microsoft Showcase. These videos explain things like Rythm and Unity.
There are a lot of other videos that should help to find your way around Expression Blend and Silverlight.
One thing that works for me all the time is to look what others do and use that for inspiration in you own design. Just google-image or bing-image for you are designing or see if it is in the Infragistics UX explorer.
I understand your question as I went through the same thing. I've done plenty of web sites over the years, but I never felt as though they had the "zing" a good graphic artist could provide. Because of this, I had concluded some time ago that to really take my skills to the next level I had to learn at least some graphic design, but I never did anything about it.
That changed when I started learning WPF. I quickly decided that I needed to learn some basics, especially when I started using Blend which was a whole new world after living in Visual Studio for so long.
To jump start my graphic artist education, I took an introductory course at our local community college. It was worth every penny: I was exposed to principles of design and some key software products like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Understanding them made Blend finally "click" for me. The experience has proven invaluable to me as a WPF developer, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in UI work.
WPF Silverlight have a lot of power however even when mastered it takes a lot of time to design a simple form say using a tab control using lots of grids with rows and columns and stack panels than it would on a normal desktop. Also it can be quite sloppy looking back at the XAML code just from a design point of view unless your using lots of windows which i try to avoid, i would rather have a tab control with each tab acting a a window. Anyway from a design point of view it is much more time consuming than a desktop application. You will find a lot of developers will use it as they are not good in code behind. So it depends on the program you are writing. ?You can make your program look very good from default controls and the listview is always a great control. Many will disagree because they think they are great developers and most likely will talk the usual no one want's to hear!
I'd like to get my feet wet in Silverlight. I think all the reading and tutorials in the world don't work nearly as well as a real project. Plus I've done tutorials, read some books, listened to podcasts and so on. I'm ready for the next step. I'm not sure how to make that step though. I'm certainly not ready to put "Silverlight development" on the resumé with any confidence. Some options:
get on elance and make some lowball bids for RIAs, assuming that part of my compensation is the experience
craigslist
find a designer who needs a programmer - already asked all my designer friends ;)
I'd like to find a non-profit ideally, it'd be cool if I felt like I was helping while I was learning. But that seems like a longshot. I'd really want it to be a publicly facing website so I can use it as a bit of a portfolio piece. And I'd be willing to work for free, or a sliding scale sort of fee. I'm not a designer, so I'd need some help in that dept. I've got some experience with that, but it was so long ago and I don't delude myself about my skills.
I've got about 4 yrs experience in ASP.NET, Winforms and C#.
Suggestions for finding this mythical project?
There is no shortage of non-profits who would love to have someone build software for them, and they don't care what technology it is (this is more or less the sentiment of any customer). I found a non-profit that has a technology need and I'm using ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight to fulfill that need, though admittedly with free time at a premium it's not progressing nearly as fast as a "paid" project. So, my advice is to find a non-profit whose mission you believe in and just send them an email. I doubt they'll turn you down.
Alternatively, help me out! :)
My first, and unfinished, project in Silverlight was started in November 2007. I was designing a poll map of the US in which the user could see realtime vote count, hover over a state and get a detailed breakdown. Similar to John King's Magic Map.
My newborn twins were three months old at the time, so I didn't have a chance to finish it but it was great experience. Silverlight is great for very visual applications. Some more ideas:
Anything geographical, like the polling stuff. There is a free XAML USA map available, Google "XAML USA map".
Graphs, charts, etc. There are some third-party controls available for this or you could experiment with rolling your own.
Drag and Drop type interfaces can really pop with Silverlight.
Games! (My personal favorite)
Here are some ideas:
Make a easily-skinnable shopping cart in Silverlight that integrates with an e-commerce back-end system
I'd try to join an existing Silverlight open source project as a contributor like
this Silverlight Ribbon project on CodePlex.