Data is at the heart of virtually any business application.  WPF ships with a flexible data binding engine that simplifies writing data centric applications.  I spend a lot of time during my WPF class talking about this data-binding feature.  In fact I devote three sections during the week to this topic.

Last week I added a new binding demo to the Data Templates chapter.  The idea is to bind a <MenuItem > header property to the contents of an XML file.  Changing the XML file contents results in updates to the menu structure.

<XmlDataProvider x:Key="menuKey"
                   Source="../menu.xml"
                   XPath="menus" />
 
  <Style x:Key="itemStyle">
    <Setter Property="MenuItem.Header" Value="{Binding XPath=@header}"/>
  </Style>
  <Style x:Key="categoryStyle">
    <Setter Property="MenuItem.Header" Value="{Binding XPath=@categoryName}"/>
    <Setter Property="MenuItem.ItemsSource" Value="{Binding XPath=menu}"/>
    <Setter Property="MenuItem.ItemContainerStyle" Value="{StaticResource itemStyle}"/>
  </Style>

You can see this demo and many other data demos during my 2 day WPF virtual class  on March 23-24.

The last couple months have been a hectic flurry of activity. Not only have I been at several conferences and the MVP summit I've also been putting the finishing touches on our Mastering Microsoft Surface™ Development with WPF class.  This class is going to be a lot of fun to teach.  First of all the class is chock full of WPF content.  WPF is a great platform for programming Surface applications (though I'd get some arguments about that from my XNA friends).  The course also has a ton of information about the Surface unit and the Surface SDK.   I don't know about you but I think the Surface is just plain fun to use.

The Surface was a huge hit during Ted Neward's  MVP summit party last week.

Creating apps for Surface

I have so many ideas for Surface applications.  The problem,of course, is that there is only so much time in a week to get everything done.  I want to have a new game ready by Devscovery NY.  We'll see if I can pull it off in time for the show.