Since it is expected that I will learn WCF and use it extensively, I decided to take a look at WPF and see what I can do with it. Considerring that I am thinking about taking some of my posts and turning them into a series of recipes, I thought that it would be a good idea to start by creating Ayende Viewer.

Not, it is not even half way complete, but it it looking good, isn't it?

Couple of notes about it:

• It plays really nice with business objects, which make me really happy. No more DataSet-Driven-Databinding.
• I took a look at the architecture and it looks delicious. Simple for the simple cases, possible for the complex cases. And (at least in initial exploring) I didn't find any welded hoods.
• The tools sucks, but I say this as someone that things that it is better that the tools will be bad and the framework easy to use than the other way around. Microsoft, please, do so again in the future, give your RTM products 6 months - year in the field, before bringing the big UI guns, it will do wonder to the code quality.
• I like the HTMLisque feeling of it...

Of course, me being me (otherwise who would I be?), I run into some interesting issues that I haven't been able to figure out for a while. It all started when I wanted to add a value conveter so I could see dates in a comprehensible form. I found out about IValueConverter, implemented it, and try to use it. No magic words could convince the application to run, it kept complaining that the type (which I just wrote) did not exists.

A long time later, I finally try to remove the reference to the converter from the XAML and compiled, it worked. Adding the references back immediately fixed this issue. As far as I can figure out, XAML is reflecting over the assembly and trying to find the type, since I haven't compiled my assembly since adding the type, it couldn't find it, and the XAML error broke my build.

Second was an issue where it would flat out refuse to acknowlenge that the resource that I added existed, some observations about the state of the moon later, I finally figured out that it is evaluating the XAML (or BAML) in order, and moved the resource defination to the top of the page.

Conclustion, I think that I will like it...