My old friends over at patterns & practices are at it again, this time with some more great guidance and tools for Composite Client applications, this time for those creating WPF Smart Client applications.

Here's the summary from their MSDN Landing Page:

The Composite Application Guidance for WPF is designed to help you more easily build enterprise-level Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) client applications. This guidance will help you design and build flexible composite WPF client applications—composite applications use loosely coupled, independently evolvable pieces that work together in the overall application.

The Composite Application Guidance for WPF can help you split the development of your WPF client application across multiple development teams. In this type of application, each team is responsible for the development of different pieces of the application, which are seamlessly composed together. The guidance includes a reference implementation, reusable library code (named the Composite Application Library), documentation, QuickStart tutorials, and hands-on labs.

For even more information, including a wiki and forums, see the CompositeWPF CodePlex site.

I completely forgot to blog this a couple of weeks ago, but Glenn Block, Product Manager for our UX/Client work, recently announced our plans for providing guidance (ala Composite UI App Block) for WPF applications.

A few important things from Glenn's post for those familiar with CAB and our other assets in this space:

What is WPF Composite Client?

This is not a  new version of CAB . It is an entirely new  set of  libraries and guidance,  built from the ground  up, targeting development of new WPF Composite applications.  We'll be working with both the UIFX and WPF teams, the same people who build the platform.

We are  not discarding everything that we did in the client space and starting from scratch. We've done a lot of work around patterns such as Modularity (composition), Services, Dependency injection, Event Brokering,  etc.  These concepts are  essential for  building Composite applications  and we will carry  them forward  into the new guidance.  However, you should expect their manifestations to be very different than what  you see today in CAB.  We're not changing the APIs for fun. We think there are  numerous compelling reasons  to do so:

1. CAB was not built to support WPF.  While you can get a n  application to work in WPF  using some flavor of CAB , you can't make use of WPF's full functionality. WPF is an inherently different paradigm than WinForms. For example,  RoutedEvents in WPF are entirely different than WinForm Events. Controls in WPF are look-less while in Win Forms controls have a specific look and feel, etc.
2. WPF does not offer the "Drag" and "Drop" Win Forms development experience. CAB  development scenarios depend upon the rich tooling and productivity experience provided by Visual Studio.  The WPF developer experience is entirely different  and incompatible.  We feel that customers  will not succeed in mechanically migrating their existing WinForms applications to WPF  and should not try. There are no upgrade wizards  such as the VB6 to VB.NET migration tools.  The transition from WinForms to WPF requires substantial effort and most developers face a steep learning curve. For these  reasons, the new offering  will not focus on migration scenarios.
3. We've learned. Over the years we've  received  great  feedback , positive and negative,  on  our CAB implementation.  We've heard  many times  that  it  is too heavy,  too complicated, too tightly coupled, too hard to grasp, etc.  Acropolis evaluators have provided new insights and suggested new approaches. We think the best way to address the concerns and tackle the new ideas -- perhaps the only way -- is with a clean break. 
4. Win Forms is not dead. I've actually had emails from customers saying that Win Forms was being retired this year . This myth must be dispelled. Win Forms  is very much alive and there are future investments in Win Forms yet to come. Win Forms is the recommended breadth solution for LOB application development for the foreseeable future.

Read the rest of Glenn's post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock/archive/2007/10/26/wpf-composite-client-guidance-it-s-coming.aspx

I've been collecting these in my Inbox and figured they needed to go out here. As you may recall, before becoming a "suit", I was the dev lead for the Composite UI Application Block (aka CAB) and for the first P&P software factory, the Smart Client Software Factory v1.

Here's what my old team has been up to lately:

• Announcing Web Client bundles
  http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock/archive/2007/09/19/announcing-web-client-bundles.aspx
• What has the Web Client Team been doing recently?
  http://blogs.msdn.com/mpuleio/archive/2007/09/19/what-has-the-web-client-team-been-doing-recently.aspx
• The Contextual AutoComplete Guidance Bundle is Available on CodePlex
  http://blogs.msdn.com/mpuleio/archive/2007/09/19/the-contextual-autocomplete-guidance-bundle-is-available-on-codeplex.aspx

Enjoy!

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by the DDJ/Dr.Dobbs guys to talk about CAB, the Smart Client Software Factory and Agile Software Development.

Now, the first of those interviews is live on ddj.com.

Enjoy!

The great team over on Mobile Client just released their software factory to MSDN. In addition to the guidance packages and reference implementations, one thing you should certainly look at if you do mobile work is the "Orientation Aware Control" (OAC).

That alone is worth the download.

Congratulations to the team!

The Client Team at patterns & practices is pleased to announce the release of the Smart Client Software Factory.

We'd like to thank everybody in this community for the feedback and participation. Special thanks to those who have closely followed each drop since we started and to our Expert Advisory Board.

We really appreciate the time you invested in helping us identify high priority areas for us to work and steer the project in the right direction.

What's next? Hands-On-Labs for Developers and Architects, a ClickOnce chapter, VB Guidance packages, and a few other surprises.

Stay tuned and keep the great feedback coming!
p&p Client Team

I love it when one of our communities starts taking on a life of its own as has the Composite User Interface Application Block (aka CAB) community.

Now a few of them have gone even further and started a site on GotDotNet dedicated to integrating CAB and the Developer Express control suite.

Congrats guys!

The p&p Client Team is pleased to announce the CTP release of the Smart Client Baseline Architecture Toolkit.

Check out the downloads section in the SC-BAT gotdotnet codegallery site. The new release includes several bug fixes, complete documentation (including How Tos, architecture descriptions, etc), the first Reference Implementation (Appraiser Workbench) and Guidance Packages to automate common developer tasks.

We strongly suggest you should take a look at the "Getting Started" document included in the distribution that explains the recommended way of exploring this guidance offering.
We would like to take the opportunity to thank this community for the support and feedback provided during the development of this deliverable. Please continue to help us!

The patterns & practices Client Team

This is very cool. This was posted to the CAB message board today.

Today Infragistics released NetAdvantage 2006 vol 1. Here is an excerpt from the Help file:

As part of the NetAdvantage 2006 Volume 1 release, we are offering the NetAdvantage CAB Extensibility Kit™. This product is an add-on to the NetAdvantage Windows Forms (CLR 2.0) product, extending the NetAdvantage Windows Forms product to provide seamless interoperation with the CAB framework. This add-on gives development teams the power to develop sophisticated smart client applications using the controls and components in the NetAdvantage Windows Forms toolset. The kit also allows development teams to provide rich, fine-grained appearances and behaviors to enterprise-class applications using predefined looks and feels, presets, and appearance settings.

The NetAdvantage CAB Extensibility Kit installs a NetAdvantage CompositeUI source-code solution and a quick start solution (ported from Microsoft) that utilizes NetAdvantage controls/components -- the key items to get your CAB application seamlessly integrated with the NetAdvantage Windows Forms (CLR 2.0) product.

Those who are interested, go and get it!

We are very excited about this offering. If you are using CAB today, check out what they’ve done.

(I don’t see anything on their home page yet, but it may be in there somewhere.)

A few weeks ago at the Redmond patterns & practices Summit I joined Ron Jacobs, Eugenio Pace and Wojtek Kozaczynski for a chat about the new Smart Client Baseline Architecture Toolkit project (aka SC-BAT). Today, Ron posted an audio podcast of that session to Channel 9. Here’s the description from the site:

Have you ever wished that someone would just tell you how to build the thing you want to build?  Like one of those do-it-yourself furniture projects?  Well if you are building a Smart Client application the patterns & practices team has just what you need in the Smart Client Baseline Architecture Toolkit (SC-BAT).  Recorded live at the patterns & practices summit in Redmond this session features Eugenio Pace, Peter Provost and Wojtek Kozaczynski detailing what SC-BAT is and how it will help you.

If you weren’t able to attend, please check it out.