Cutting Edge User Interface Design?

MrBaseball34 · December 14th, 2009, 11:07 PM

Ok, the Outlook Bar UI look is so blasÃ© now.

What would you say is cutting edge UI design and does anyone know of any sites discussing it along with new UI controls?

samjudson · December 15th, 2009, 05:28 AM

Well obviously WPF is the new cool as far as .Net UI design is concerned. I did hear some talk about some UI layoutout patterns and templates on a recent episode of .Net Rocks but I can't find the link.

MrBaseball34 · December 15th, 2009, 10:46 AM

Do you remember when the episode was?

samjudson · December 15th, 2009, 10:53 AM

Not sure - it might have been the My .Net Story one, but I could be wrong.

Bob Bedell · December 15th, 2009, 05:28 PM

I learned WPF by tearing apart 3 applications. Look at their UI's. You'll say "Wow! You can do THAT!!"

Sasha Barber
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/LtoE.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/CinchVI.aspx

Daniel Vaughan
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/CalciumPart01.aspx

Both Barber and Vaughan are "WPF Disciples", and publish their stuff on Code Project (http://www.codeproject.com/) and Code Plex. Subscribe to the Code Project newsletter which is published every Monday. Barber's second app listed above is an awesome MVVM framework. Vaughan's is a composite app built on top of Prism. See http://www.codeplex.com/CompositeWPF and say "Wow!" again.

Another WPF Disciple you should pay attention to is Josh Smith, who also publishes regularly on Code Project.

Josh Smith
http://joshsmithonwpf.wordpress.com/

WPF Disciples
http://wpfdisciples.wordpress.com/

Then be sure you have the Windows SDK installed (with tons of WPF samples).

Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (ISO)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

WPF rocks!!

Best,

Bob

Bob Bedell · December 15th, 2009, 07:16 PM

Should mention they're all pretty complex apps. But probably the most valuable thing I took away from them was simply how to "steal" their resource dictionaries, and use/modify them to stlye my own controls.

Don't know if you know how to do that or not. But its pretty simple. Just yell if you'ld like a quick walk-through. Spent the last weekend working with Sasha Barber's RDs. Three days styling a vertical scrollbar thumb of all things. Programmed Windows Forms for years and never - not one time - ever even thought about a scrollbar thumb, much less programmed one. That's WPF for you.

Bob