Mariano Szklanny’s Blog

In case you missed it, Mariano Converti has been blogging about the Composite UI Application Block and Smart Client Software Factory in spanish. It's good to hear that because there are very few people blogging in spanish about CAB and a lot of hispanic CAB users, so this is very valuable to the community.

Here is the list of posts that he has published so far (more to come for sure!):

• Introducción a Composite UI Application Block (CAB) I (Intro to CAB)
• Introducción a Composite UI Application Block (CAB) II (Intro to CAB applications initialization) 
• Introducción a Composite UI Application Block (CAB) III - (Intro to Modules)
• Introducción a Composite UI Application Block (CAB) IV - (Intro to MVP pattern)
• Introducción a Composite UI Application Block (CAB) V - UI Extension Sites (Intro to UI Extension sites)

We released a draft version of the hands on labs for Smart Client Software Factory almost a month ago, and we got over 1000 downloads. We will release the final version soon which will include, apart from the current labs, the following ones:

• Adding offline capabilities to your solution through the Disconnected Service Agent Application Block
• Using WPF views

This is a great opportunity for you to influence on the final version of the labs. Please let us know what you think about the draft release, by either leaving your comments in our blogs, contacting us directly or posting in our community site. The following questions might help you:

• Suppose you are starting a project that uses SC-SF. Would you recommend your team members to read the labs?
• Were the procedures clear enough?
• Did you find the background information and content useful?
• What topics need further explanation?

Thanks in advance; your feedback will help us improve the labs.

I'm happy to announce that we have published a draft version of the Hands On Labs for Smart Client Software Factory May 2007!

Download

The goal of these Hands on Labs is to provide developers with a step-by-step guidance to help them understand the core components of the factory and learn how to take advantage of them to develop smart client applications.

This set of labs is not just a minor update to the version published for the June 2006 version of the factory: we revised all the content, included additional background information, and demonstrated new features of the factory.

This release includes the following labs:

For the final release we plan to include these labs too (subject to change):

Please feel free to provide feedback in our community site. We are still in development process so you have the chance to influence on the final release.

I’m proud to announce that I’ll be part of the team that is in charge of delivering the v2 of the Smart Client Software Factory, which will include new functionality, a lot of updates and a number of usability fixes. I’ve worked with most of the guys in the team in the first version of the factory and also in the development of the Web Client Software Factory, so I’m sure we’ll have a wonderful experience as we had in the past.

One of the members of the team is Blaine Wastell, project manager. He has just started his blog and has posted a lot of cool stuff. Keep an eye on it because he’ll be posting frequently to let you know about the state of our iterations and the project’s progress.

We have just had our first drop, which you can get it from Codeplex site.

See the plan for Smart Client Software Factory v2 in Blaine’s blog: Plan for Smart Client Software Factory April Update

The team that was next to our workspace when I was in Redmond, has published the December 2006 release. For those who don’t know what it is:

The Web Service Software Factory (also known as the Service Factory) is an integrated collection of tools, patterns, source code and prescriptive guidance. It is designed to help you quickly and consistently construct Web services that adhere to well known architecture and design patterns.

More information and download, see Web Service Software Factory.

Want to see the cool collaborative workspace where we work? Don’t miss this great video interview with Edward Jezierski and Peter Provost walking around the building.

Get it from Channel9:
Tour: Patterns and Practices Lab

These days have been very exciting because I’ve traveled to Redmond - USA, to join the Web Client Software Factory team in Microsoft headquarters. I will be developing here for a few months, so probably I will start blogging about it soon.

Here you have a nice picture

Johnny (on the left) is also working with me. I’m the guy in the right

Don Smith, Product Manager at Patterns & Practices is asking for your feedback about how p&p communicates with you.

Please see these posts:

• Written Guidance. Necessary?
• It’s all about community!

Also, Tim Osborn has posted in the SC-SF message boards asking for SC-SF documentation feedback and suggestions.

Your feedback will be really appreciated!

Have you ever tried to remove a guidance package and got an error during the uninstallation process, preventing you from uninstalling it?

Fortunately, you can remove a guidance package manually if you fail to unregister/uninstall it. A user in the SC-SF message boards pointed out a blog entry from Tom Hollander in which he explains how to remove guidance packages manually:

If there are packages that cannot be removed, here is how to remove them manually:

1. Open C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Recipe Framework\ReceipeFramework.xml
2. Remove any or all of the elements from the file (actually it’s a good idea to paste them into another window so you know which packages you have to clean out of the registry), and save the file
3. Open the registry and look for the following keys under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0
   
   • Packages\{77d93a80-73fc-40f8-87db-acd3482964b2}\Templates : Delete all subkeys that refer to guidance packages you don’t want any more (they will have GUIDs as their key names)
   • Languages\CodeExpansions\CSharp\Paths : Delete all values that refer to guidance packages you don’t want any more
   • Menus : Delete all values that refer to guidance packages you don’t want any more (they will probably be at the bottom after all the ones named after GUIDs)
   • NewProjectTemplates\TemplateDirs : Expand each of the subkeys (they will have GUIDs as names) and expand the /1 key below that. If you find one whose (Default) value is named after an unwanted guidance package, delete the entire GUID key and the /1 key below that.
4. If any of the guidance packages you removed manually were installed from an MSI, run msizap to clean up the MSI-related registry settings.

Johnny Halife has recently posted an article that describes how to apply Test Driven Development (TDD) when developing applications with the MVP pattern.
I recommend you to have a look at it and download the sample code included. You will find it very useful if you are developing applications with CAB and SC-SF.

How-To: Write MVP using TDD