I plan to shoot over to a local printer tomorrow to have them print the Composite Application Guidance for WPF Documentation. They have printed all the various software factories and application blocks documentation for me in the past. This gives me something to take to the pool or read in the lanai without staring at a monitor.
My reason for mentioning the documentation, however, is that nowhere have I seen such great documentation from other open-source projects. And, in addition to great documentation, Microsoft Patterns & Practices gives you quickstarts, reference implementations, and other goodies that you just don't normally find in the open-source arena. So if you wonder why some open-source tools don't become as pervasive in the .NET community, this is probably part of the reason.
So, in addition to getting a wonderfully illustrated help file on the Composite Application Guidance for WPF and the Composite Application Library:
You also get a good summary of design patterns that are used in the Composite Application Guidance for WPF:
- Dependency Injection
- Inversion of Control
- Service Locator
- Separated Presentation
- Supervising Controller
- Presentation Model
So, regardless if you want to use the guidance or not, you get a nice introduction to various design patterns that seem to be talked more than ever in the .NET Developer Community.
The Composite Application Guidance is about creating composite WPF applications, much like the WCSF is for creating composite web applications and the SCSF is for creating composite smart client applications, so the documentation takes this further and discusses design concepts related to developing composite applications:
- UI Composition
- Modularity
- Container
The Composite Application Guidance for WPF Guidance then peels the onion further by discussing details and terminology particular to the the Composite Application Library which helps with the development of composite applications using design patterns to solve the common challenges:
- Bootstrapper
- Container and Services
- Module
- Region
- Shell and View
- Event Aggregator
- Commands
- Communication
I dare say that if you are familiar at all with the Web Client Software Factory and Smart Client Software Factory you will pick up the similarities quite quickly. But again, the WPF Guidance is building you up for full understanding of the concepts which gets you ready for the quickstart samples and Stock Trader Reference Implementation that are also documented. Once you understand the tutorials and examples, you can walk step-by-step through the common tasks to create composite WPF applications as well as look through the customization possibilities.
The point here is that this is great documentation and a great learning experience for FREE! You get the written guidance, the plethora of examples, step-by-step on how to use and customize the WPF guidance, and the source code to boot. Even if you choose not to use the Composite Application Library, you have already won by working through the documentation and source code. Even if you don't do WPF Development, download the Composite Application Guidance for WPF Documentation anyway just to stretch your mind a bit :)
Hope this helps,
David Hayden