WPF's databinding is absolutely fuck-all like ASP.NET's abortion of a workaround of a kludge. It is a thing of beauty, it goes like shit off a shovel, and it lets you do almost anything. For a start, you can bind to properties of complex object properties. You can provide custom formatters, type converters and stuff. There's multi-binding and priority-binding.

The only thing it's got that's anything like ASP.NET is DataTemplates, and those are great.

Microsoft really have nailed that whole "make the simple stuff easy and the complex stuff possible" thing this time.

I shall believe that when I see it.

Been using the whole data entity framework / ESQL thing lately, which is sooooo painful it's untrue. The only other ORM type affair I've used in a production setting is ActiveRecord, and though I whined a bit about that, I never shall again.

"What, you want to use a view? Then you shall have to manually write this 2000 line XML file, and a pox on you! Also, do not try to use the edmx in the editor, or I shall overwrite all of that handcoded XML of yours. Thank Christ you use subversion."

.meic | fruuti

I'm just putting the finishing touches to my own hand-rolled business-object + ORM framework, and it's much nicer than EF. It's got a Query Language and everything.

The thing I'm doing in WPF is the front-end for the code generator, in fact.

That was just referring to WPF.

The best thing about it is being able to work with the layout as a proper hierarchy, and copy and paste bits and bobs properly and easily. Like docking, which was a complete bastard in Windows Forms, is a doddle when you're editing XAML directly. And the flexible layout controls like Grids and StackPanels are great, and don't slow down to a crawl just cos you embed a few of them. And the Command system, which is like MFC but much, much easier, is also great.

I haven't even started mucking about with Themes yet, but those look very nice too.

 
    <UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"; xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"; Margin="0" Background="#FFC0C0C0">
<StackPanel Margin="34">
 
<MediaElement Source="C:\video.wmv" Width="300" Name="mypic"/>
<!-- <Image Source="C:\picture.jpg" Width="300" Name="mypic"/> -->
<Rectangle Height="{Binding ElementName=mypic, Path=ActualHeight}" Width="{Binding ElementName=mypic, Path=ActualWidth}">
<Rectangle.Fill>
<VisualBrush Visual="{Binding ElementName=mypic}"/>
</Rectangle.Fill>
<Rectangle.LayoutTransform>
<ScaleTransform ScaleY="-0.7"/>
</Rectangle.LayoutTransform>
<Rectangle.OpacityMask>
<LinearGradientBrush EndPoint="0,1">
<GradientStop Offset="0" Color="Transparent"/>
<GradientStop Offset="1" Color="#77000000"/>
</LinearGradientBrush>
</Rectangle.OpacityMask>
</Rectangle>
</StackPanel>
</UserControl>
 

 
    <TextBlock Text="{Binding ElementName=SomeObject, Path=MyProperty}" />