WPF ribbon sample application, RibbonWindowWord

This is great news for Windows developers looking to build rich, fluent user experiences. From the MSDN documentation:

The ribbon is a command bar that organizes the features of an application into a series of tabs at the top of the application window. The ribbon user interface (UI) increases discoverability of features and functions, enables quicker learning of the application, and makes users feel more in control of their experience with the application. The ribbon replaces the traditional menu bar and toolbars.

In short, this control library gives you the ability to incorporate a ribbon user experience in your applications today.

A Quick Background About the Ribbon User Experience

The ribbon was first introduced in Microsoft Office 2007 as a replacement to its traditional menu-driven design. At that time, customers were telling us that it was becoming difficult to navigate through the expanding features and commands that had been added over the years. This resulted in a non-optimal user experience as users had trouble finding what they were looking for. Even worse, the “cacophony” of options made it difficult for users to discover new functionality. Today, the ribbon has provided users of applications like Microsoft Word 2010 with a contextual and task-oriented user experience, allowing them to focus more on their work and less on the application itself (AKA, a big-time win for user productivity).

Microsoft Ribbon for WPF

For Windows developers, the ribbon provides a rich experience that you can incorporate quickly and easily for your WPF applications. What’s particularly cool about the Microsoft Ribbon for WPF is that it’s a control library that’s built 100% in pure WPF goodness.

File → New Project...

After downloading and installing the Microsoft Ribbon for WPF, you’ll find the WPF Ribbon Application project template listed for both Visual C# and Visual Basic:

New project templates for WPF Ribbon Application for both Visual C# and Visual Basic

This project template provides you with a very simple example to help get you started:

MainWindow example showing the Ribbon, RibbonTab, RibbonGroup and RibbonButton controls

For a deeper examination of the XAML and control library that’s used to build this application, I strongly recommend that you read Pete Brown’s excellent summary of this release in a post entitled,Announcing: Microsoft Ribbon for WPF RTW. Pete also provides an important point (with emphasis added):

The new ribbon control is compatible with WPF 3.5sp1 and WPF 4. This is a 100% WPF implementation, not a wrapper around native code. That means you get all the great WPF styling capabilities for the new control.

This fact cannot be underscored enough. A true WPF implementation means that you can incorporate styling and rely on assumed WPF functionality (i.e. RibbonButton support the ICommand interface – wahoo!). Having built my fair share of WPF applications in the past – in some cases, wrestling with control interop and styling issues – I love this news.

So, what are you waiting for? Download Microsoft Ribbon for WPF today and start incorporating it into your applications!

Related Links

• Ribbon Download
• Ribbon Documentation from MSDN

PS: If you building applications with Windows Forms, check out Windows Ribbon for WinForms project on CodePlex.

UPDATE: The WPF team has posted a great overview of the Microsoft Ribbon for WPF here along with a series of blog posts here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Your team can practice Scrum more easily by using the artifacts in Visual Studio Scrum 1.0. Each artifact serves a specific function and provides opportunities to refine your processes over time. These artifacts include work items, reports, and team queries, and your team can use them to track information, analyze progress, and make decisions.

This process template was first announced at Microsoft TechEd 2010 in New Orleans earlier this summer and was recently updated to incorporate a number of new capabilities. You can read Brian Harry’s blog post to read more about its motivation. For the v1.0 release, Aaron Bjork provides a good summary of what to expect in this release on his blog. Of the questions listed, I found this one particularly interesting:

Q:  Did Microsoft work with Agile thought leaders when building this template? 
Absolutely. We worked closely with a group of Scrum experts and trainers teaching the new Professional Scrum Developer Program including Ken Schwaber fromhttp://www.scrum.org/. It was very important to us that this template be recognized by the community (you) as a great option for Scrum teams. The Professional Scrum Developer Program is taught with Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0.

A Quick Installation Walkthrough

First, download and install Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 from the Visual Studio Gallery. It’s a (small) 483KB MSI package that will provide you with the files required for both the Process Template Manager (to install the Scrum process template) and your project portal (for the Scrum reports). As an alternative, you can download Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 via the Extension Manager of Visual Studio 2010 (listed under Online Gallery → Tools → Process Templates):

Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 in the Extension Manager of Visual Studio 2010

Next, launch the Process Template Explorer in Visual Studio 2010 (Team → Team Project Collection Settings → Process Template Manager...):

Process Template Manager

Click the Upload button and select the folder where the Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 process template is installed (i.e. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0\Process Template). Once installed, the Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 should be listed in the Process Template Manager as follows:

 
Process Template Manager with Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 Installed

For projects based on this template, you should see the following structure listed in Team Explorer in Visual Studio 2010:

Team Explorer Structure with Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 Process Template Installed

As you can see in the image of the Team Explorer window (listed above), artifacts (like work items) are defined in accordance to the Scrum literature. You can create bugs, an impediment, sprints, and many other artifacts, all from within the Team Explorer window. It’s pretty awesome; almost as awesome as ahot dog vending machine.

By the way, if you’re looking for move the data of an existing project into a new project built from Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0, you should check out the TFS Integration Platform project on CodePlex.

New Reports with Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0

Here are a few screenshots of some of the new reports available in Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0:

Velocity Report in Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0

If your team has completed multiple sprints, you can forecast release and product completion dates and plan future projects more accurately by reviewing the velocity report.

Sprint Burndown Report in Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0

By reviewing a sprint burndown report, you can track how much work remains in a sprint backlog, understand how quickly your team has completed tasks, and predict when your team will achieve the goal or goals of the sprint.

Release Burndown Report in Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0

By reviewing a release burndown report, you can understand how quickly your team has delivered backlog items and track how much work the team must still perform to complete a product release.

In addition to these three reports (above), we’ve also included four new reports to the template that focus on engineering metrics:

• Build Summary
• Builds Success Over Time
• Test Case Readiness
• Test Plan Progress

These reports are included in the MSI package and take about five minutes to install. There’s a Scrum SharePoint solution package that’s included (Microsoft.TeamFoundation.SharePoint.Scrum.wsp) and requires deployment to your SharePoint server.

Looking for more information? Check out a detailed overview of Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 on MSDN. Also, if you're looking to learn more about Scrum, I'd recommend checking out thehttp://scrum.org/. From the site: Scrum.org's purpose is to improve the profession of software development so that developers love their work and our customers love working with developers.

Related Links

• Announcing Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 by Aaron Bjork
• Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0
• TFS Integration Platform
• Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 (MSDN)
• Process Templates and Tools (MSDN)
• Scrum.org

Note: This post also appears on the Canadian Developer Connection.

Before Attending Microsoft TechEd 2010

• Have a plan. Review the Agenda and Sessions thoroughly and use the Schedule Builder to plan out your itinerary. Consider talking to your manager/mentor to sort out your schedule and goals for the event.
• Bring a large and durable backpack (i.e. Brain Bag by Tom Bihn). You'll likely accumulate a considerable amount of "stuff". You'll need a bag that's strong/supportive enough to withstand a week's worth of packing and unpacking.
• Bring comfortable shoes. You should expect to walk a great deal when attending TechEd.
• Consider bringing a smaller laptop; a netbook makes for a great conference machine. You're going to spend a great deal of time sitting and walking around. You will want to pack light.
• Bring a lot of business cards. Stick them behind the name badge of the lapel that the conference organizers will be providing you so they are easy to access and hand out to people.
• Plan for not-so-great wireless at the event and at your hotel. Think about it: You'll be at a conference with thousands of wireless hungry professionals, just like you. Put your 3G card into your bag before heading out.
• Set your out-of-office reply in email, letting folks know that you're unavailable and how to escalate items in your absence.
• Schedule some "recovery time" before leaving for TechEd. This is time you'll need to catch up on email and voicemail that will accumulate while you're attending the conference.

While Attending Microsoft TechEd 2010

• Dress appropriately for the event. New Orleans can be pretty hot and humid at this time of year. Be prepared.

Ugh. Today's weather (May 31, 2010) in New Orleans. To a Canadian, this equals "NOT FUN".

• Arrive early for breakout sessions (i.e. 15 minutes before start time). Generally-speaking, they are well-attended and finding a good seat 2-3 minutes prior to the start time is next to impossible.
• Eliminate distractions. TechEd is a wonderful opportunity to learn and connect with your peers. Switch your mobile off, close Outlook and pay attention to the presenter.
• Visit the Track Areas section of the Technical Learning Center (TLC). In my based, this is the absolute best place to get answers to questions you have about Microsoft-related products and technologies. This area will be filled with product team members from Microsoft and should be considered a must attend/visit part of your itinerary.
• Keep an eye on the #TechEd hashtag for information and news relating to the event. Many ad-hoc meet-ups are scheduled on Twitter and are great opportunities to connect with like-minded individuals.
• Participate, get involved and most importantly, ask lots of questions. Your TechEd experience (from a learning perspective) will be much better if you take the initiative by engaging and talking with others.
• Don't worry too much about taking detailed notes. Most breakout sessions will be recorded. Record the "ah-ha!" moments but don't stress about writing down everything you hear in a session.
• Submit evaluations and more importantly, let speakers know what you thought of their presentations. Believe it or not, most speakers (including myself) read EVERY SINGLE COMMENT that's written/typed on an evaluation. Use that opportunity to provide feedback.
• Charge your laptop and mobile phone as soon as you get back to your hotel room. It's easy to forget given how busy you'll be at TechEd. Believe me, you'll thank yourself when you're not having to spend time between sessions charging your devices the next day at the event.

After Attending Microsoft TechEd 2010

• Take some time and mentally review what you learned at the conference. There will be a lot of information to absorb and you'll need some time to synthesize it. (More often than not, I come home from a conference and my brain hurts. Note: Not from alcohol but rather, from all of the ideas I have.)
• Report what you learned to your colleagues. Did you see something cool? Did you discover a solution that will dramatically impact your business? Let others know. Write a quick email or organize a "lunch & learn" where you can recap the week's events.
• Send an email to the TechEd organizers and let them know what you thought about the conference. Believe me, they'll want to know.

Some What-You-Should-Do-While-Attending-a-Conference Resources

• Attending a Conference (Career Tools Podcast)
• Top 10 Tips for Attending a Conference
• Tips on Attending Conferences
• Top 7 Tips for Attending a Conference
• Tips for Attending a Conference
• Attending a Conference: Tips for Success
• Get Your Own Conference Hangover!
• 10 Tips to Get the Most Out of Attending a Conference
• Tips and Advice for Attending a Conference (PDF)
• Web Conference Survival Tips

Oh, and there's one more thing...

Yes, I'll be attending TechEd. I'll be there with Mack Male and members of the Canadian DPE team. If you happen to see me wandering around, please stop me to say hello. I always love meeting up with folks from the technical community, especially Canadian developers!