P.S Invest in a cubicle swear jar, the amount of times I've also heard fellow devs/designers breathe out a sigh followed by "F...you Microsoft..."
--- Regards, Scott Barnes http://www.riagenic.com On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 11:56 AM, Scott Barnes <[email protected]>wrote: > Not really, Blend's original purpose was to be the middle-ground tool, to > take the WinForms "design your screens" and really just isolate that > workflow into its own area. The grand vision was that a designer / > developer mutated zombie (devigner?) was to sit in a cubicle and interact > with both parties to produce a XAML based solution for all to worship, high > five and adore. > > It wasn't until we spent around $500k in research that we soon figured out > that the Devign Zombie doesn't exist, in that they are very rare (I'm an > actual Devign Zombie, so ....i'm rare! lol) and in reality the overall > story between the XAML/C# pipeline started to grow further and further > apart. It's why you see the Cider Teams version of the designer surface > didn't really matchup all that well in VS2008 to say Blend. In VS2010 the > teams put together a better design surface, but the result is what I'd call > "going to the prom with your cousin" (its better than nothing, but you're > going to feel really wrong afterwards). > > Blend for me is the actual productive way of developing UI, I still every > now and then revert into XAML mode mainly to fix bugs that I find in Blend > - as its a piece of buggy crap. The gains you get over editing XAML imho is > way better and i've never really understood why on earth developers spent > so much time making sure the XAML is tabbed correctly and readable given it > as a "language" was never ever ever ever meant to be touched by human hands > other than to tweak attributes here and there. > > That being said, its clear Blend never got traction with developers as it > was considered to foreign and the same goes for designers. It's why its > actual download rates aren't that high and the actual purchases of Blend > were embarrassing low. It's definitely in dire need of a UX personality to > come through and simplify the entire existance of this into user friendly > tooling but in reality that has been pitched and shot down many times > internally. Given Blend is now a HTML5 focused tool going forward, who > knows how that will pan out. > > All that said, WPF / SIlverlight has no short cuts to "getting started", > its simply a solution that requires a pound of flesh up front. You're going > to find days when you get excited about the possibilities but then there > are also days when you figure out soon enough that the overall solution(s) > have their way of kicking your butt. Many a time i've watched devs spend > days on a bug, despite time boxing rules. > > Reality is, Silverlight/WPF aren't that well thought out and you simply > have to pick fights with the two each day to master it. It at times feels > like you have to plant the forest, harvest the wood, carve the tools and > then you can start to build your dreams (kind of like Minecraft really, you > start naked in the forest and 90hrs later, you have a wooden house that you > can hide in from creepers (Blend/VS tooling). > > > --- > Regards, > Scott Barnes > http://www.riagenic.com > > > > On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 10:28 AM, Grant Molloy <[email protected]>wrote: > >> I think in the beginning Blend was thought to be the "designers" tool, >> and vs to be the Devs tool. Many devs think of themselves as designers too >> (devsigners) or their company doesn't have a designer, so they delved into >> blend themselves. Then cae the blog entries, which I think led devs to >> believe they need Blend. >> >> I haven't been in xaml for a few months now, but I think you need to >> remember how mature winforms is versus xaml. MS missed the mark by a fair >> way with xaml by not matching the completeness of winforms. I haven't >> played with VS2011 and don't know if MS have improved this. >> >> Having said that, xaml is powerful and it's the fine control in these >> times that makes it so powerful. I remember an app which needed a zoom >> feature on an image, so I styled a check box control into a zoomable image, >> using xaml (layout, style, and behaviors). >> >> My question about your interfaces would be why are they so complex? >> Do they need to be? >> Should you simplify / refactor them? >> Are you using a 3rd party control suite or just VS controls? >> Are you cutting your own themes or using 3rd party ones? >> Are your themes in separate resource files? >> >> Am I wrong in saying that you can drag and drop a toolbox control into >> the text editor view? >> >> In the end, if it's not economical for you, don't use it. >> On 24/11/2011 9:12 AM, "Greg Keogh" <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Hi Folks, I’ve been working with Kirsten on her new WPF app, and I’m >>> the source of her concern about WPF productivity, after she watched me >>> composing moderately complex screens by editing the XAML in VS2010. I >>> posted about this last year, but only received replies about “persist and >>> you’ll get there and like it” types of responses.**** >>> >>> ** ** >>> >>> I’ve now been writing Silverlight and WPF intermittently for a few years >>> now and I have never found a more productive way of creating reasonably >>> complex screens other than by manually editing the XAML, and if it weren’t >>> for the intellisense I would probably never have started.**** >>> >>> ** ** >>> >>> I hope you’ll agree that the VS2010 design surface is utterly useless >>> for composing XAML using the toolbox, if anyone disagrees, let me know. Any >>> attempts to drop tools onto the designer produce bizarre unexpected >>> results, and you’ll be lucky if they even drop where you expect. For that >>> reason I became quite proficient in editing XAML directly.**** >>> >>> ** ** >>> >>> Then Blend 2, 3 and 4 came out. I didn’t actually legally own Blend >>> until I recently paid $3750 for a two year premium MSDN subscription which >>> include Office and Blend suites. I have never like Blend. It has a totally >>> different “feel” with new shortcuts, docking behaviour, colours and UI >>> hints, it’s also “cluttered”, confusing, non-intuitive and worst of all I >>> would have it open on one screen and VS2010 on the other, getting dizzy >>> looking back and forth. Blend gives me the stinkin’ sh*ts.**** >>> >>> ** ** >>> >>> As a result of all this, I claim it can take me from 5 to 20 times >>> longer to write a WPF app UI compared to a WinForms UI. That results in a >>> lot of time, money and frustration wasted. I know that WinForms and WPF >>> have totally different underlying encoding schemes, so it’s simply the >>> design experience that leaves me bewildered and leads me to ask this:*** >>> * >>> >>> ** ** >>> >>> Do others out there have day-to-day techniques for efficiently composing >>> complex WPF UIs? How are you doing it? Is there a friendly toolbox-drop and >>> design technique that Kirsten (and me) are used to?**** >>> >>> ** ** >>> >>> Any specific advice would be most welcome. I feel I must be missing out >>> on some productivity “trick”. Perhaps it’s because I hate Blend that I’m in >>> this rut.**** >>> >>> ** ** >>> >>> Greg**** >>> >>> ** ** >>> >>> Ps. I have skipped mentioning other irritations like styling (which >>> requires someone with special skills and Blend) or adding animations and >>> triggers which bloat the XAML to huge sizes making them nearly impossible >>> to edit by hand. I also ignored the sheer complexity of the XAML and how >>> hard it is to remember something like the syntax and nest of tags required >>> to make a ListBox item template (for example). I find I’m continuously >>> looking up XAML samples on the web and pasting them in. I also find I’m >>> writing converters all the time to get stuff appearing as I need.**** >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> ozwpf mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://prdlxvm0001.codify.net/mailman/listinfo/ozwpf >>> >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> ozwpf mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://prdlxvm0001.codify.net/mailman/listinfo/ozwpf >> >> >
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