Advanced Usage of Grouping in CollectionView with ItemsPresenter

CollectionView is an object that we generally use while dealing with a collection in WPF. It is an object structure that supports a collection as well some of the inherent features which a user might always need while dealing with a collection. Some of the features like Sorting, Grouping, Filtering are automatically implemented in a CollectionView.  I have written one article on how to deal with CollectionView way back in Aug 2010 which explains almost everything you need to do while dealing with collection in WPF. But it does not give the entire story.

Controls that can show a Collection in WPF is somehow derived from ItemsPresenter. The ItemsPresenter has a property called ItemsSource which takes an object of ICollectionView, and hence it is one of the important interfaces considered so far.

There are some advanced scenarios where the general Grouping or sorting does not makes sense. Here in this article I am going to deal with such advanced scenarios which might be worth mentioning.

.NET Book : Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook (Must Read)

Friends,

It is my great honor to tell you that my book has finally been released this week. If you have ever liked any of my blogs or internals, you would like this book for sure. There are lot of things to learn from the book and I can assure you that you wont be upset with this book if you buy it.

The "Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook" is a book that guides you through steps to ensure you enrich the best experience with the latest technology in the best amount of time possible. The book focusses to give you under the hood expertise in .NET technologies it tends to cover and adapts you the best to face common problems of these technologies. The book is divided in forms of recipes. Each of these recipes gives you clear insight of the problem and step by step process to solve the issue practically. It also addresses the advanced features associated with each of those recipes that gives you additional advantage on getting precise knowledge about the problem and its associated issues.

What you will learn from this book

• Basic usage of Visual Studio 2012 IDE and its various components and better utilization of the tool while writing code
• Understand memory management techniques to build better applications
• Understand the .NET infrastructure with in-depth analysis of its internals
• Architect solutions that leverage the full power of .NET language gems, understanding when to use what
• Implement multithreaded / asynchronous applications using recent updates on .NET 4.5 and compare the past approaches
• Create secure ASP.NET web based applications in .NET 4.5 with use of JQuery and HTML5 for rapid application development
• Architect advanced .NET client applications using MVVM with WPF 4.5
• Understand touch sensitive devices and leverage skills to develop multi-touch applications inside Windows 8

DEVCON – Kolkata, A New Beginning on 12th November, 2011

November 12th , we are getting together for a big event Developer Conference 2011 Organized by Microsoft User Group Kolkata (KolkataGeeks) .  Developer Conference is the premier technical event for technology professionals at Kolkata interested in learning, connecting and exploring latest Microsoft technologies.  This is also going to be community Launch event for Office 365. So be there and enjoy the flavor of cutting edge Microsoft technologies.

This is a full day event and you can attend this  event in person at Bharatiya Bhasha Parisad 36A, Shakespeare Sarani, 4th Floor  Kolkata – 700017.  Overall there are 7 different sessions which primarily focused on latest Microsoft Technologies.  .  Check the Dev Con Web Site for more information.

I’ll be presenting on “Windows 8 Metro Style Application“.  In this session I will talk about latest Windows release and how you can get best out of it through your Metro Style applications. There will be lots of demo in this session. 

Check out session details and agenda from here http://kolkatageeks.com/DevCon2011.aspx .  You can register for this event over here  http://kolkatageeks.com/DevCon2011/Register.aspx

See you there !

Layout adjustments Snapping and OrientationChanges in Metro Applications

If you have read my first article on Windows 8 metro styled application, you might already know about the working principle of it. I have talked about the capabilities for an application and settings which end user can configure for an application. In this post I will take a look at the basic layout structure that one needs to follow while creating an application in WinRT Metro styles so that it is best suited to perform well.

Layout is the most important part of any application. The best design for an application gets more credit and love from the users than applications that are designed bad. Metro style applications runs in full screen. Your application does not include a  Title Bar, status bar or anything. Microsoft gave us some of the basic layout guidelines that one needs to follow. Lets talk about them here to make you understand how you should layout your application in Metro Applications to utilize maximum flexibility of it.

Understanding basic WinRT Metro Applications and Application Capabilities

Just about a month ago, WinRT was introduced with all new style of application development that can work better with Multi Touch Enabled devices. We call it as Metro Applications. In this post, I will discuss how to develop your first metro applications and how to work with its layout changes.

How to Start

Before we start talking directly about Metro Style application, let us see how to install it first. I refer to use OracleVM which you can find for free from this link, and install.  This will install a Virtual Machine in which you can install the Developer Preview of Windows 8.