Category: Design

DesignDeveloperDevelopmentManagementSoftware

Chernobyl: The True Cost Of Technical Debt

link.medium.com/6CMGCxeA6X

DesignDevelopment

The Roadmap for WPF – News from the .NET Framework Blog

I’m glad to see some attention being applied to WPF/XAML. Looking forward to all of the new tooling improvements and whatever else they release. Keep it coming!

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2014/11/12/the-roadmap-for-wpf.aspx

DesignDevelopment

Windows Store apps–App features, start to finish

Came across an excellent resource for Windows Store app development that goes over the app features from start to finish.

This start-to-finish series helps you add features to your app to engage your customers and to create the kind of experiences that draws people in and delight them. Each guide walks you through building an app from scratch to app certification. Start with a basic flat or hierarchical app and add features from there!

List of app features lists on the site are:

  • Flat navigation
  • Hierarchical navigation
  • App UI basics
  • App state
  • File handling
  • User interaction
  • User interaction customization
  • Media playback
  • Geofencing

Each of these features includes both an HTML and XAML guide. Check it out.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/dn263202.aspx

Enjoy!

DesignDevelopment

Idea books for commercial and enterprise app design (including sample code)

Came across a great post on the Windows App Builder Blog for creating Windows Store apps.

Create great Windows Store apps that provide elegant, engaging, consistent and compelling user experiences in Windows. Idea books are a great starting point to inspire you when designing your Windows Store app. Idea books target different app categories and show what’s possible as well as how to create best-in-class experiences in your app.

idea-book_thumb_034E5836

From the blog post, you can see the current list of idea books that have an accompanying code sample:

Enjoy!

References

http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/appbuilder/archive/2013/08/02/idea-books-for-commercial-and-enterprise-app-design-with-sample-code.aspx

DesignDevelopment

Article Links for Using Expression Design for Windows Store and Windows Phone Logo Assets

2 great articles on how to use Microsoft Expression Design for creating Windows Store and Windows Phone logo assets for every resolution.

Generating Windows Store Logo Assets At Every Resolution by Kyle Anthony Mitofsky

Windows 8 apps need 28 logo varietals; enter Expression Design by Jerry Nixon

Enjoy!

DesignDevelopmentWeb

Expression Design is Now Available for Free

image

Microsoft Expression Design is now available as a free download from the Microsoft Download Center and as stated by Microsoft, no new versions will be developed.

It’s unfortunate that these tools will no longer be developed, however it looks like Microsoft will shift their focus to help improve the tooling in Visual Studio and Blend for Visual Studio for creating new applications.


Expression Design is a tool for creative professionals and developers who want to build graphics for application user interfaces, the web, or any other medium.

The convenience and ease of editing vector graphics in Expression Design can be a cornerstone of your Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Microsoft Silverlight, and web images. Whether you’re a veteran professional illustrator, a designer building a dazzling website, or a budding artist eagerly experimenting with various styles and techniques, you will find Expression Design an indispensable tool for your creative tasks.

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You can download Expression Design here.

Related

Microsoft Expression Web is also available for Free and can be downloaded from here.

For more information on Microsoft’s Expression product line, please see the Expression Website.

Enjoy!

DesignDevelopment

FREE Themes for WPF and Silverlight Microsoft Controls

I came across some blog posts about how Infragistics is giving out FREE themes for WPF and Silverlight Microsoft Controls. Links for each of these themes is below. Please take a look and download.

Hopefully Infragistics continues to release more themes.

Free Metro Light and Dark Themes
http://brianlagunas.com/free-metro-light-and-dark-themes-for-wpf-and-silverlight-microsoft-controls/

Free IG Theme
http://brianlagunas.com/free-ig-theme-for-wpf-and-silverlight-microsoft-controls/

Enjoy!

DesignDevelopment

XAML UI Responsiveness tool in Visual Studio 2013

Interesting article about a new XAML UI Responsiveness tool included in Visual Studio 2013…

From the perspective of interaction-performance applications need to be “fast” and “fluid” – fast to launch, to navigate between pages, to react to changes in orientation, and fluid in scrolling, in panning and in animations. This post introduces the XAML UI Responsiveness tool, a new tool in the Visual Studio Performance and Diagnostics hub that lets you analyze such interaction-performance of your XAML-based Windows Store applications.

Reference

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2013/07/11/xaml-ui-responsiveness-tool-in-visual-studio-2013.aspx

DesignDevelopment

Designing the Visual Studio 2013 User Experience

Great post on the Visual Studio Blog on Designing the Visual Studio 2013 User Experience.

sshot-498

DesignDevelopmentMobileWeb

Responsive Design: The Only Mobile Strategy That Scales

http://www.sitefinity.com/mobile-web/responsive-design-graph?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=sm&utm_campaign=sm_t_telerik_rwdinfographic