Getting started in WPF

Question

We are evaluating the use of WPF for an upcoming project. We plan to "commercialize" some of our internal tools and could really use some of the effects WPF offers. We also like the idea of the design layer and code layers being independent to allow concurrent work.

1. Where can I find a simple UI built with WPF (XAML) that I can pull apart?

2. What is the workflow if the designer is creating the UI and the developers are coding. What does the design staff give the developers (.XAML files? an assembly?)

Answer 1

From Microsoft.

Answer 2

An open source app with relatively simple ui that is well designed is crack.net. I used it to finally understand mvvm.

As for design workflow, that's a harder question to answer for you. You need to figure out what will work for you and your designers. They can work within the same .proj file as your developers and that's very conveinient. But you may want to separate those assemblies for management sake.

Answer 3

As far as workflow goes.
I had worked in a team where we had a dedicated UI designer. Though he had a degree in CS he said that using Blend distracts too much from the UI design. So he still was doing mock-ups and a developer was translating that in Blend+VS+manual XAML tweaks.
Also, despite what is claimed, Blend is most useful as an example-snippet editor to better understand XAML.
On my current WPF project I use Kaxaml mostly, since WPF editor in my installation of VS is painfully slow and in-stable.
The idea is that your designer will produce you XAML and developer will simply add code to that - didn't work for us. And honestly, I don't see how that can work at all. Since there are still many things in UI that need to be tweaked for the presentation layer.
Also, any UI technology can be isolated in a well designed system. And I don't really see any advantages of WPF at that. Especially that MS promotes data-binding so eagerly.