Family.Show: a new WPF reference sample

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Tim Sneath posted the first end-to-end reference sample on his blog. The Family.Show application - developed by Vertigo Software - is a genealogy explorer that allows you to create or import a family tree and explore, annotate or save it to XPS.

A couple of weeks ago I had installed a early internal build of the Family.Show application and at that time I was already very much impressed about the usability and the combination of features and design of this application. By now, it only became better!

Tim highlights some of the features in his blog post. Have a look here.

The good news is that the source code of this application is released with the quality level of a reference application. The goal here is to show best practices for the construction of an application and to try and include as much reusable code as possible that others can use both to understand the framework and to "borrow" for a real application.

Beside the source code there's also a what we learned session on the Vertigo site where the development team shares some lessons learned:

Wondering how this all works?
Watch a five minute video of Family.Show in action, recorded by Scott Stanfield. If you will be at Mix07 in Vegas the next couple of days you might want to check out Scott Stanfield's session on the project:

"Family.Show": I See Dead People, with Windows Presentation Foundation

When: Tuesday, May 1 11:45 AM - 1:00 PM, Delfino 4005

Speaker: Scott Stanfield - Vertigo

Audiences: Designer, Developer

For a hobby that revolves around dead people, genealogy is remarkably popular: it's the fastest-growing scene in North America. And a perfect study for Vertigo's next Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) reference application for Microsoft. Our designers employed every trick in the WPF book (styles, resources, templates, data binding, animation, transforms) to present an innovative visualization of the classic family tree, freeing our developers to concentrate on behind-the-scenes features like XPS, printing, PInvoke wrapper for Windows Vista common dialogs, and Click-Once for WPF. See all of this with hands-on demos and our top-10 list of stuff to know about WPF and Microsoft Expression Blend. And, unlike the real-world case studies, you get the source code.

Technorati tags: WPF reference application, Windows Vista, WPF, MIX07