I'm not positive what I'm going to do with this blog, but I'm heavily considering moving most of my blogging over to WindowsClient.net.  Just did my first post: Rob start his WindowsClient.net Era - 3rd blogs a charm (http://blogs.windowsclient.net/rob_relyea/archive/2008/02/10/3rd-time-is-a-charm.aspx)

I knew you could change the default from WPF Designer to XML Editor (and lose all the intellisense), but I didn't know this tip that Josh shows about Xaml editing in VS...

The other day I blogged in "My car runs on oil from a baby seal" that people would be able to conserve gasoline, reduce driving, etc.. better if they could visualize the amount of gallons they used per day (GPD).

Now I tripped over this site that talks about a similar measurement, visualization and motivation technique that Jerry Seinfeld used (and maybe still does).

Just clicked on the SkyDrive tab on the top of my blog...I decided to test this file sharing service by posting a picture that Kevin Moore made a few months ago of me with an online tool to draw somebody as a Simpsons character:

Skydrive is likely easier for me to share files that others can find than having to mess with RobRelyea.com...

WindowsClient.net, is of course, the Windows client technology community website...like asp.net is for ASP.Net developers.  Now you can have your own blog there:

Interested in blogging with the WindowsClient.NET community? Well now you can, with your own blog on the site. Read the terms of use and if you agree, click here to sign-up.

First Adam Nathan on Silverlight, WPF, Popfly...now Brian Noyes digging into Databinding...love it.

Glad to see Rob Burke blogging a bit about WPF again!  Looks like he has landed in Toronto.  Look forward to seeing you @ Mix?

Listening to Adam on .Net Rocks now...on Popfly and Silverlight (and a bit of WPF)

• In the intro, they mention type converters from System.Windows.Converters...yes, type converters are key to Xaml's ability to convert "strings to things".
• Wow, he has learned to love Javascript...
• 21:20 - discusses using designers for development...

Scott Koon thinks not:  http://scottkoon.org/2008/02/08/i-still-hate-xaml-though-quo/

Remember, my November 2004 blog post "Our 7 Goals for Xaml" - human readability was one of the goals...not the only goal.

Interesting seeing an xml format with property elements like "<body.head>" and "<body.content>"...

Here is an example of the xml format that looks like it tries to be an html like representation of a document that is convertable to a flowdocument (from XML to FlowDocument Converter)

<block class="text">

<p fontfamily="georgia" fontcolor="black" fontsize="12" fontstyle="normal" fontweight="normal">The decision – which also applies to cargo services – is significant, said industry watchers yesterday.</p
<p fontfamily="georgia" fontcolor="black" fontsize="12" fontstyle="normal" fontweight="normal">Although the December 2008 date had been set four years ago, there was no certainty that all members of the 10-nation grouping would agree to free up air travel by then, they said.</p>
<p>Mr Anthony Concil, a spokes man for the International Air Transport Association, a 240-member airline grouping told The Straits Times last night “Clearly, this is a big and con crete step in the right direc tion...What we are seeing is tha Asean has picked up the bal and is moving forward.”</p>

[update: turns out that format is NITF, which I've never looked at, I believe...which the Syndicated Client Experiences Starter Kit uses...funny that they seems to have used a Period in a tagname before Xaml did.  Back in 2004 I listed some options we were considering for the syntax of Property Elements]

Just saw that Laurent Bugnion is about to go on ski holiday...me too. Love the picture! TechReady (internal MS conference), ski @ whistler, Mix with lots of coding/work in between.  Should be a fun/crazy next 30 days!  Looking forward to sharing some of the things we're doing on the WPF team @ Mix...

My weekly skiing at the local mountain (Snoqualmie pass) has been interrupted the last few weekends due to heavy snow, closed highways (I-90) through the mountain passes, etc...  Hope I can ski this Saturday.

Love to see the progress on all fronts: http://robrelyea.com/wpf/mentions

WPF likely picked up since more people are seeing VS2008 and trying File/New Project...hey a WPF application! Mix will likely help again...I'm giving a talk or two there...hope to see many of you there...

Seems like a good start for a developer: Realistic UX goals to aim for

Dax sent me a pointer to Nukeation's first release of Theme Collections for WPF.  Check them out...

I was excited to see VisioExportToXaml on Codeplex from Saveen Reddy (with credits to Thierry Bouquain and SharpVectors).

Saveen blogs about it in "Updated Add-In for Visio 2007 to Export to Xaml"

Original Visio

XAML rendered in in Expression Blend

Had a work lunch with a teammate and a few folks from another Microsoft group the other day.  I drove the 4 of us to lunch (in my wife's new hybrid). My teammate, contrasting it with my hybrid, said his Porsche "runs on oil from a baby seal."  :-)

Gallons per Day (GPD)

My gallons per day interest continues, but Ski season (a 90 mile roundtrip once per week in my SUV to the mountains) has hurt my numbers...I also haven't taken the bus for several weeks... :-(  Since October I'm averaging 1.53 gallons per day.  My wife is a similar 1.57 gallons per day.

Good idea of the Day - cars which help drivers understand their GPD

Would be great if my car could automatically report to me my gallons per day...the last few days, average performance for the year, etc...  In fact, everybody's car should do this - getting the right data in front of people in a grokable fashion is the key to awareness and change.

New Category of Posts - GreenRob

This post and a few of my previous posts are now marked with the "GreenRob" category.

Karl explains how to create an "Expander Control With Popup Content" to enable this:

[via Christopheer Steen's Link Listing]

Matthias wrestled with ComboBox in "How Do I Wrap Text In The ComboBox?" to get this scenario to work and shares his solution, which enables:

[via Christopheer Steen's Link Listing] -- (I created a new "WPF - Scenarios with Controls" category to point out things like this...)

Ran into a comment by Kent on Kevin's post about WCF serialization with Xaml where he pointed toward this "Xaml" post where he discusses Xaml verbosity and separation of concerns into Functional and Aesthetic Xaml.

Kevin, o, Kevin.  I miss you in these halls of building 10...

But I'm very happy to see you continue your WPF blogging.

Notable posts of late:

• A REAL update to the Bag-o-Tricks
• WPF Set: Now in 3D!
• Xaml Serialization with WCF