I understand a lot of the pain that Mark is feeling. I'm in the middle of a big .NET3 project myself.
If the look & feel and detail of the presentation is important to your overall project, then I really suggest staying away from WinForms and using Expression Blend. At Motorola with the guidance of our contractor x-coders.com (highly recommend them; Another recommendation would be Donald Burnett) we have created a workflow that is really optimized to take advantage of the split between Expression Blend and Visual Studio. You need to work tightly with your UI Integrators to make the most of the tool, but if done correctly with good object management and good development of resource dictions and templates, the UX Designer can really control the full production presentation layer. Won't won't you be able to do at all or easily: 1) Databind - the books make it seem easy, but reality it is a bear 2) create a click through. The folks at frog say you can do this, but I really can't see how w/o going into code in VS and this is the land for the integrator 3) create a datagrid (you know, a simple tabular spreadsheet of data). The included controls of WPF SUCK!!! for what I would call THE most important and valuable pattern in our toolkit. I mean really guys and I know you are listening. Man! be prepared at the conference, b/c I'm definitely going to give you a mouthful on this HUGE f'-up 4) get your transitions as tight as you would want for production. It requires code to do this. If you have a lot of dynamism going on in your forms (conditional states and what not) this will require VS code. The HUGE advantages of Blend and the WPF environment is around the flexibility of structure. a Grid will be your friend for life. Stack Panels are sheer heaven. The layout tools are just to die for. I can't understate. This is the real prize of Blend and completely makes up for that list view mess they created. I do like working in the tool over all. Blend is NOT a prototyping tool. It is a production tool. I would never design in it. people might want to design in the Graphic Design tool first, but I don't see that happening any time soon, except for those MS partners that are invested in it so that they can get on the stage at some MIX venue. the reason it doesn't work to do graphics there and then interaction and final layout in Blend is that you need to create user controls. Popping out user controls can be done, but you really need to have a sense of the entire context and when making controls you loose the context of the parent view. Another big F'up, but not as big as the list view. (Chris? Sean? Am I being fair?) BTW, Microsoft is a Platinum Sponsor at Interaction08. If you are going they would love to talk to you about the tool, but also talk to developers that have had experience with it already. They are VERY open to listening to us. It's why they are coming. AND! they are bring the Halo3 ... NO MERCY! And Rock Band ... Long Live Rock!!! -- dave -- dave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=24290 ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
