I think it might be a good idea, if you get a book on WPF, it helps to have a lot of the fundamentals all consolidated in a book for you to flick through, even if it's not reading all of it, but being exposed to the concepts and knowing that it's there really helps.
I recommend WPF Unleashed, I'm looking at selling off a spare copy if you're interested, otherwise if ebook floats your boat, look around online ;) Further to that, from a learning perspective, you really need to throw out the WinForms mentality of precision pixel placement of items. In essence these wysiwig designers don't work with WPF, it's just not something that will work, as others have said if it's not using Top and Left for absolute positioning in a canvas, it's using Margin to achieve the same thing in Grid's, and that's pretty much what most of the designer tools emit when you're dragging things around, but you need to understand it's counter productive, as it doesn't help with the flexibility of your applications layout. On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Kirsten Greed <[email protected]>wrote: > ** > > Hi Brian**** > > ** ** > > Thanks for the link to Karls’ training. It was very useful. **** > > Your narrative captures my frustration and hopes…**** > > I am wondering about positioning fields on the controls – do you tend to > write XAML or use the designer?**** > > ** ** > > Kirsten**** > > **** > ------------------------------ > > *From:* [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] > *On Behalf Of *Brian Whitehorn > *Sent:* Wednesday, 23 November 2011 11:01 AM > *To:* 'ozWPF' > *Subject:* RE: Getting up to speed in wpf**** > > ** ** > > Hi Kirsten,**** > > ** ** > > I’m also new to WPF via WinForms via VB6 via COBOL, and by no means a WPF > expert, but I have found while WPF allows for the same “style” of building > a form as to what WinForms did, there is far more power and flexibility to > be had by not doing it the winforms way.**** > > ** ** > > A resource I found very useful (apart from “forgetting what I ‘know’, > which is often the hardest”) was “In the Box – MVVM training” **** > > > http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/in-the-box-ndash-mvvm-training/ > **** > > ** ** > > I found the whole process goes something along the lines of “I used to be > able to do this in 2 minutes, this is soooo much more”, to “aaah, that’s > pretty cool”, to “nah, 5 minutes ago and I’d have already been finished”, > to “nice, this will allow for much better reuse”.. it’ll take time to get > to grips, don’t give up, the more you carry on with it, the picture becomes > clearer (like putting pieces of a puzzle together) . I’ll try find my list > of other links I stored when 1st delving into the WPF bits. Enjoy!**** > > ** ** > > Cheers,**** > > Brian.**** > > ** ** > > PS > even before the mvvm, I just plonked controls into the XAML and > altered by hand editing the xaml, just to get a feel for what the xaml > does, and what properties etc on the “mainly used” controls used. > Understanding how the xaml and the controls made the step to the designer > in VS and Expression Blend much easier to understand per what I was trying > to achieve.**** > > ** ** > > *From:* [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] > *On Behalf Of *Kirsten Greed > *Sent:* Wednesday, 23 November 2011 10:46 AM > *To:* **[email protected]** > *Subject:* Getting up to speed in wpf**** > > ** ** > > Hi All**** > > I am new to WPF and missing the winforms way of doing things .**** > > I am wondering about the best way to get up to speed**** > > Do people usually set the data source and drag drop controls onto the > designer – or use write XAML – or use Expression Blend - or something else? > **** > > Pros and Cons?**** > > Thanks**** > > Kirsten**** > > > > __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus > signature database 6652 (20111122) __________ > > The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. > > http://www.eset.com**** > > _______________________________________________ > ozwpf mailing list > [email protected] > http://prdlxvm0001.codify.net/mailman/listinfo/ozwpf > >
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