All this XML stuff these days has its advantages but as primarily a Windows Forms developer starting to work on WP7 apps and such I have to say I'm severely disappointed at all the design time controls we are losing. I've spent many hours in the past poring over config files for remoting and similar things only to eventually give up on it and do it all via code because I just couldn't figure out why it wasn't working (and I'm already finding myself doing the same thing in WP7 to an extent.) There needs to be better error handling on these XML files to catch this sort of stuff upfront, cause I bet if you were doing this in WinForms it would have fixed that for you. Of course they tell us this stuff is coming, but I don't like the chances it will ever get to the level WinForms is now, cause there's XML config stuff that's been around in VS for quite some time (excluding XAML) that still doesn't have editors/validation to stop these sorts of silly time consuming errors.
Regards, Nathan Keir Systems Analyst John Deere Financial Limited A.C.N. 078 714 646 Australian Credit Licence Number 391484 Incorporated in Queensland, Australia 166-170 Magnesium Drive, Crestmead, QLD, Australia 4132 PO Box 1544, Browns Plains BC, QLD, Australia 4118 +61 7 3802 3274 (office) +61 7 3802 3142 (fax) [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> www.JohnDeere.com.au<http://www.johndeere.com.au/> CONFIDENTIALITY. This message, including attachments, may be confidential. If you believe this message was sent to you in error, do not read it. If you are not the intended recipient, any retention, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. Please reply to the sender that you have received the message in error and delete it. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Greg Keogh Sent: Monday, 26 March 2012 9:28 AM To: 'ozDotNet' Subject: ResourceDictionary gotcha Folks, I modified a WPF app recently to use ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries in most the controls so I could put shared resources and styles in a shared library project. So I have lines like this as I described last week: <ResourceDictionary> <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> <ResourceDictionary Source="FooApp.Common;Component/CommonDictionary.xaml" /> ... </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> </ResourceDictionary> There is something subtly and terribly wrong with the Source line above (can anyone see it immediately?). In VS2010 and Blend 4 you can design controls okay, but when they are nested the designers fail and tell you the resource is not found. This problem was so irritating that I knocked-up a mini solution to demonstrate it to ask the group if anyone could figure out what was wrong. Well, the mini sample worked. So after days of puzzling over why the big app worked and the mini one didn't, I stumbled across the difference ... You have to put a leading / before the resource Uri like Source="/FooApp..." I see that online articles do the correct thing, but I accidentally forgot the / and dug a hole for myself. It's terrible that such a tiny mistake can waste so many man-hours. Greg
