Birmingham University Talk - Lap around WPF
Yesterday, I travelled north to visit Birmingham Computer Science department to give a guest presentation on WPF to a large lecture theatre's worth of students. I think that will be my 4th presentation there in 3 odd years so it's kind of a regular gig, even though I was filling in for Team Academia, and a pleasure as always.
As promised to the students who attended and the lecturer, Dr Edmonson, here are the slides (unfortunately I can't upload the code although there are plenty of great demos around to look at)
The talk covered the following topics:
1. Introduction and look at the history of Operating Systems and their user interfaces
2. Value of User Experience in current and future software
3. What is .NET 3.0?
4. WPF, it's architecture and XAML
5. Demo - live coding bonanza
- Layout and controls
- Data and DataTemplates
- Templates and Styling
- Triggers and Animation
6. Summary and demo of New York Times reader
As part of this module Dr Edmonson allows industry speakers like yours truly to propose essay topics and the one which we came up with in his office before hand which I think marries the real-world/industry direction and the academic research world really well is:
Is Vista a move in the direction of an invisible OS/Application? (or words to that effect)
My old team mate Andy Sithers will be doing the marking and I'm sure I'll get roped into helping.
And as a challenge to the students who attended my talk - if you have any questions about the talk, WPF or how you think you should approach the essay then leave a comment/question in the Comments section of this blog entry.