Developing Windows Presentation Foundation applications with Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 4

Overview

This course provides the necessary skills and techniques to design and create rich client applications using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 4.

The course is presented as a mixture of lectures and hands-on exercises. Instructions and solutions are provided in both C# 4.0 and Visual Basic 2010, enabling you to work with your choice of language. (Before attending, delegates must already know one of these .NET languages.)

Those intending to take the 70-511 TS: Windows Applications Development with Microsoft.NET Framework 4 exam and 70-518 PRO: Designing and Developing Windows Applications using Microsoft.NETFramework 4 will also benefit from attendance at this course.

Prerequisites

• Delegates should already have experience of using the C# or Visual Basic .NET programming languages, which can be gained by attending one of our C# or Visual Basic .NET programming language courses
• Delegates should also already have experience of data access and data binding using APIs such as LINQ, ADO.NET and/or the Entity Framework , which can be gained by attending one of our C# or Visual Basic .NET programming language courses
• Knowledge of GUI programming, using technologies such as Visual Basic 6, Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) or WinForms would be an advantage, but it is not required
• This course is ideal for Developers and Team Leaders who will be using Windows Presentation Foundation and the Microsoft .NET Framework to write and deploy Windows applications

Delegates will learn how to

• Create and manage Windows Presentation Foundation - WPF projects in Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 4
• Identify the various application styles supported by WPF; stand alone, XBAP and navigation service
• Import assets created in tools such as Adobe Illustrator
• Use panel controls to layout the user interface
• Describe the WPF event and commanding models
• Understand the WPF 2D and 3D graphics engines
• Create practical animations and use a combination of triggers and behaviors to control them
• Use styles and control templates to enhance the user interface
• Contrast custom controls and user controls
• Author reusable controls and implement dependency and attached properties
• Apply the Model View View-Model design pattern to their design
• Build flexible, and easy-to-maintain code using Unity
• Use the powerful data binding engine to present model data to the user
• Enhance the responsiveness of the application by implementing asynchronous processing
• Configure application settings
• Incorporate localisation support
• Combine WinForm and WPF technologies
• Deploy their applications

Course Outline.

Module 1 : Fundamentals of Windows Presentation Foundation - WPF

• What is Windows Presentation Foundation - WPF ?
• The Windows Presentation Foundation - WPF architecture
• Explore WPF structures: standalone and XAML Browser - XBAP
• Comparison of WinForms and WPF architectures
• What is Extensible Application Markup Language - XAML ?

Module 2: Creating and maintaining WPF projects in Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 4

• The structure of a WPF application
• Interoperability between Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 4
• Choosing the appropriate tool
• Use Sketchflow to prototype applications
• Creating resource libraries
• Local and global resources
• Import graphical assets from Expression Design
• Import assets from Adobe Illustrator
• Referencing assemblies

Module 3: Designing the user interface and arranging elements

• Drawing controls in Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 4
• Using the Asset Library in Expression Blend 4
• Layout user interfaces with panels
• Using controls: content controls and list controls
• Managing controls: setting properties in code and markup
• Setting properties
• Visibility and Z-Order
• Transforms

Module 4: Application Model, Navigation Service, Dispatcher

• WPF Application model
• The Navigation service
• The UI thread and asynchronous processing
• The Dispatcher object

Module 5: Commands, Events and Properties

• Properties
• Routed Events
• Commands

Module 6: Data binding fundamentals

• What is Data Binding?
• Fundamentals: DataContext; Binding Modes; Change Notification
• Element Binding
• Collections: CollectionViewSource; Master Detail
• XML Data

Module 7: Data Binding - Data Templates, Tooling, Conversion and Validation

• Data Templates
• Tooling
• Conversion
• Validation

Module 8: Applying the Model View View-Model - MVVM to Windows Presentation Foundation - WPF applications

• Model View View-Model (MVVM)
• Implementing MVVM
• Dependency Injection

Module 9: 2D graphics and multimedia

• Shapes and geometries
• Brushes
• Images
• Effects
• Multimedia

Module 10: Animation

• Animation fundamentals
• Tooling in Expression Blend 4
• Controlling with triggers in XAML
• Controlling with .NET code

Module 11: Using styles and templates to enhance the user interface

• Styles
• Resources and themes
• Applying styles and themes programmatically
• Templates
• Data templates
• Visual State Manager
• Tooling

Module 12: Authoring controls

• The need to author new controls
• Approaches to authoring new controls
• Deriving from Control
• Deriving from FrameworkElement
• Deriving from UserControl
• Commands, Events and Properties
• Tooling

Module 13: Testing and debugging

• Unit testing MVVM projects
• UI automation testing
• Debugging XAML and tracing
• Unhandled exceptions
• Other tools

Module 14: Creating and manipulating 3D graphics

• Examples / uses for 3D
• Key/core elements
• Simple scene
• Manipulating 3D scene/model
• Tools
• Performance and best practices

Module 15: Configuring and deploying WPF applications

• Deployment options (standalone vs. XBAP)
• Interop
• Localisation and culture
• Using Resource and Content files

Related training courses

• Building Effective ASP.NET MVC 3.0 Web Sites using Visual Studio 2010
• Building Effective ASP.NET 4.0 Web Applications using Visual Studio 2010
• Enterprise Microsoft .NET 4.0 Framework
• Developing Secure .NET Web Applications – Mitigating the OWASP Top 10 Security Vulnerabilities
• Developing Classic Windows Forms applications using Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4.0
• Building Effective Windows Communication Foundation applications using Visual Studio 2010