PDC flashback: Sparkle Hands-On-Lab

We got the attendance/survey score yesterday: Sparkle ranked top Hands-On-Lab for PDC This is a great opportunity to thank everyone who came to the lab and had a hands on experience with the product. You guys kept us busy all three days, but it was totally worth it!
For those who did not attend PDC or missed Sparkle Interactive Designer’s HOL, Here is a summary of the lab:
The tutorial was a walkthrough to develop a simple product catalog application with real time data binding to a local XML data source. The lab adopted a workflow model that separates the content creation from the styling and finishing.

Exercise 1: Bind to the data source and create the containers:
In this exercise, you learn to use the tool to bind to a local XML file containing description of some fictitious products and links to local images.
This is how the application looks like after the first exercise is accomplished (Notice the real time data binding inside Spakrle that enables you to work with real data at design time)

Exercise 2: Styling your application
In this exercis, you learn to change the plain default look of your application to a more stylish look and feel using gradients, template editing, and layout. The screenshot below shows the results of exercise 2:

Exercise 3:Adding Visual Effects:
In this last exercise, you learn how to create simple animations, transitions and visual brush reflection effects to give your UI a more polished look.The results look similar to the figure shown below:

It took people on the average an hour to finish the tutorial. This is not bad for first time hands-on experience with Sparkle. It takes me usually less than 15 minutes to replicate the application since I know my way around the environment.
Once again, thanks to everyone who came to the lab… Feel free to post any further feedback about the lab here or email it to me: akhella at gmail dot com.

And finally, like my friend Mano always says: “It’s all vector baby!”

PDC 2005: Developers, Designers, Developers

At PDC’05, Microsoft finally anounced Microsoft Expression . I have been privileged to be working as a Program Manager for Sparkle Interactive Designer, and now seeing the people’s reaction and getting the feedback from the attendees was amazing.
We have a full Hands On Lab at PDC almost all three days, everyone hailed Sparkle Interactive Designer and everyone wanted to get a copy. While there are no anounced release dates of Sparkle yet, keep an eye on Microsoft Expression website for announcement and bits.
Sparkle Interactive Designer, in a nutshell, is an rich design environment that enables designers to design the user interface without writing code, and without interfering with any code that the application developer wrote.
Behind the scenes, Sparkle generates XAML. Designers own XAML and developers own C#. This actually means that, with the right separation of business layer and presentation layer, developers and designers can work together at the same project simultaneously.
Over the next period, I will be posting introductions, articles and screenshots about the product, as well as samples that will run on any machine that has the PDC installation of WPF (formerly known as Avalon).
I know you all want the bits… Be patient and I will post a notification here as soon as they are available.