WPF for Business Applications

Presenters: Markus Egger, Mike Yeager

This event took place on Wednesday, November 16, 2011.

Where:   Onsite at CODE Training Center (6605 Cypresswood

Dr. Suite 300, Spring, TX 77379) or remotely via GoToMeeting
When:    Nov 16, 2011 - Nov 18, 2011 (Wednesday - Friday)
Desc:      An in-depth lecture style training to educate attendees about productively building WPF business applications

This workshop answers all your WPF questions by teaching fundamental techniques that apply to WPF. Attendees will learn proper application architecture and design, enabling attendees to build systems that are easy and productive to build including using WPF on various the supported platforms such as Windows, Mac, and Windows Phone 7. The workshop teaches highly productive development techniques. Time is also allocated towards teaching attendees how to build applications that look professional, and how to do so productively and without the need of artistic talent. Many of these topics are CODE Training specialties that are not taught anywhere else, making this one of our most popular classes. Attendees of this workshop will learn how to work productively and build future proof applications and systems, regardless of their prior WPF knowledge (or lack thereof).

The training class will be held at our offices in Houston, Texas as well as online via GoToMeeting.  After the class, attendees will receive the powerpoint slides, the code samples and videos of each class as reference materials. 


Check out this video by Markus Egger to see of the types of topics that will be covered in the Templates and Styling for WPF & Silverlight classes:
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  • Wednesday

    9:00 – 10:15 Introduction to WPF
    This session introduces the general concepts behind WPF and shows various examples that highlight the benefit of WPF over other UI approaches available. This session also introduces XAML (the markup language that drives most WPF and Silverlight UIs) and other core concepts.
    10:15 – 10:30 BREAK
    10:30 – 12:00 Writing and Deploying WPF Applications
    This session shows how to build user interfaces "the right way". This session starts with an introduction of various WPF UI Design tools (including Visual Studio and Expression Blend). The session then guides the attendee from a simplistic and conventional UI approach (as it is used by other UI environments, such as WinForms or HTML) to a more modern approach that takes advantage of the WPF paradigm. This session provides a soup-to-nuts overview of how WPF applications are built in the real world. Each of the discussed topics is explored further in subsequent sessions. This session aims to provide an overview to allow attendees to get oriented.
    12:00 – 13:30 LUNCH BREAK
    13:30 – 14:45 WPF Layout and Controls
    This session focuses on the creation of WPF interfaces and starts with an explanation of the basic concepts, such as the available controls and how to build user interfaces using various controls, layout panels, and of course XAML. This session also takes a first look at related concepts, such as such as data binding, automatic layout, view models, templates, and much more.
    14:45 – 15:00 BREAK
    15:00 – 17:00 Fundamentals and New Concepts
    This session takes us beyond the basics that we’ve learned so far and on to more advanced topics. We’ll take a look at the Application Model, Dependency Properties, Attached Properties, Logical and Visual Trees, Routed Events and Command and Threading. This session will give attendees a solid understanding of a wide range of concepts in WPF.



    Thursday

    9:00 – 10:15 WPF Business Applications - Part 1
    Introducing general concepts for building business apps in WPF. This session provides a very brief review of WPF concepts and paradigms. However, the majority of this session is spent on creating a solution setup that works for real-world WPF projects. This includes not just the setup of the UI aspects, but also other elements such as view models and access to middle tiers or services. The session creates a real-world setup designed to accomodate business scenarios which involve typical data scenarios (handling of data in view models and also data binding in the UI). User interaction is discussed in detail as well.
    10:15 – 10:30 BREAK
    10:30 – 12:00 WPF Business Applications - Part 2
    This session is a continuation of the the previous session.
    12:00 – 13:30 LUNCH BREAK
    13:30 – 14:45 Prototyping, Designing and Testing Business Apps
    Should we start developing from the database up, or from the user interface down? In this session we’ll tackle that question, and present an approach that works well when building business applications. We’ll go over prototyping, writing presentation logic from a TDD (Test-Driven Development) angle, waiting until the last responsible moment to implement a database, etc
    14:45 – 15:00 BREAK
    15:00 – 17:00 Other WPF Concepts
    This session discusses various topics that have gone unexplained so far, including deployment options. This session also takes a look at topics such as 3D, graphics acceleration, graphics rendering (vector art), animations, a closer look at resource management, and much more.



    Friday

    9:00 – 10:15 Styling Basics
    Introducing general concepts for styling WPF business apps.
    10:15 – 10:30 BREAK
    10:30 – 12:00 Control Styling and Templating
    This session introduces advanced styling techniques for controls and other UI elements. The emphasis is on creating functional controls such as modified textboxes and buttons, and also on advanced control styling, such as styling lists and tab controls for amazing results that can be produced extremely quickly and at a high degree of reuse and maintainability.
    12:00 – 13:30 LUNCH BREAK
    13:30 – 14:45 Advanced Layout styling for Productive Business Application Development
    WPF and Silverlight are the only UI environments that enable advanced automatic layout for business applications, allowing developers to focus mosly on business specific things rather than pixel-perfect positioning of elements. This session provides an in-depth look at existing WPF/SL layout elements and then proceeds to create custom layout panels with amazing results.
    14:45 – 15:00 BREAK
    15:00 – 16:30 Graphic Design for Developers
    Developers aren't designers and they probably shouldn't be. However, developers are still asked to create professional looking applications. Most developers fail embarassingly in this task and that is rapidly becoming non-acceptable. However, basic design skills are not based on artistic talent, but these skills can be learned just like other development techniques, and this session sets out to teach exactly this skill.
    16:30 – 16:45 BREAK
    16:45 – ?? Ask the Experts / Q&A
    Got questions? Got a WPF application you are ready to build? Ask the experts and hit the ground running!

    ** Please note that times are approximate and meant to be flexible depending on class participation and questions.

    Registration is extremely limited. For more information please e-mail info@eps-software.com or call Christopher at 832-717-4445 x 13.

    Discounts may be available for companies who have previously attended our classes. Call Christopher for details. Please note that instructors & exact curriculum may change. All sales are final.