WPF/E with ASP.NET Integration
by Don Burnett
I spoke before about how I believe that WPF/E was a “right sized” plug-in and does just enough. Further proof of this showing up everyday. Integration gives us some really amazing capabilities, so let’s get down to it and look at some ways you can use WPF/E with ASP.NET..
The first one comes from Mike Harsh’s own blog. Way back in December he published the first WPF/E server control in ASP.NET. This lets you embed WPF/E and XAML anywhere in the page and it comes with a very cool WYSIWYG designer to make it all easier.
The next one and it’s most promising comes from Bryant Likes over at the bryantlikes blog. His entry (and thanks for the mention by the way), shows us how to go about creating ASP.NET server controls to generate XAML on the page. What’s neat about this is it completely dispells yet another one of those myths that you can’t have WPF/E and input controls simultaneously.
In fact Bryant has also dispelled the databinding myth many times over as well with his article on simulating datagrids in WPF/E. His samples are very straightforward and there is great detail.
These are must-reads and must-snag code for anyone doing anything serious with WPF/E development. I have subscribed to his blog and recommend you do so as well.
Integration makes everything possible, and very much not a necessary “build-in” like other presentation layer systems and controls.
Anyway if you aren’t subscribing to these guys blogs and you are doing WPF/E work you are missing out. Thanks for proving the point I was making and showing us how to improve and make some really cool extended integrated XAML enabled controls for ASP.NET.
