VisualStateManager not working as advertised
Kent Boogaart
I just posted this question on StackOverflow (where I can format it
nicely): http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5002501/visualstatemanager-not-working-as-advertised
It really is a perplexing issue that has wasted me a lot of time over
the past week or so, due to its unpredictability and the odd ways it
can manifest itself in a more complicated project such as the one I've
been working on.
If you could take a look and see if you have any thoughts, I'd greatly
appreciate it. Feel free to post here or on SO - I'll make sure to
link all the information together for future reference.
Thanks,
Kent
Marlon Grech
Kent Boogaart
To be clear, the "fix" involved Duration didn't actually fix anything.
I've not been able to find any workaround yet.
I reported it on Connect today:
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/644453/erattic-behavior-in-visualstatemanager.
Any votes/confirmations of repro appreciated.
Hope all is well in Malta, Marlon.
Best,
Kent
On Feb 16, 7:35 pm, Marlon Grech <marlongr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> mmmm very strange ... sometimes VSM scares me... it does quite a bit of
> magic.... nice find with the fix i.e Duration=0
>
> Regards
> Marlon
>
>
> > All,
>
> > I just posted this question on StackOverflow (where I can format it
> > nicely):
Peter O'Hanlon
Peter O'Hanlon
Sacha Barber
Marlon Grech
Microsoft MVP for Client App
Kent Boogaart
easier, and to make collaboration with a designer easier (I actually
have a "Blend guy" on my current project!). But it has wasted me so
much time, as you guys have probably noticed by my posts on this board
lately.
I was extra disappointed when I turned on animation tracing and
got . . . so very little. Nothing VSM-specific at all - just
storyboards starting stopping with no explanation as to why.
Kent
On Feb 17, 7:43 am, Marlon Grech <marlongr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> still VSM gives a big + to Developer Designer workflow... designers love VSM
> and I must admit I love the idea as well, its the implementation that
> i believe can be improved.,.. its not that its not good, its that there is a
> lot of stuff going on in the dark and you are not aware of it. Then there is
> also the fact that when it comes to control it lacks a bit ..
>
> Regards
> Marlon
>
> > This is why I prefer WPFs approach to triggers and animations. There's less
> > sacrificing a chicken involved.
>
>
> >> Yeah, I have a far less trusting relationship with VSM now.
>
> >> To be clear, the "fix" involved Duration didn't actually fix anything.
> >> I've not been able to find any workaround yet.
>
> >> I reported it on Connect today:
>
> >> .
Kent Boogaart
the Storyboard.Completed event to be raised:
dynamicTransition.Completed += delegate
{
// when Completed is raised, everything works fine. But
Completed is not always raised!
};
So it seems this bug is as a result of another long-standing and
seemingly ignored bug on Connect:
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/571102/storyboard-completed-event-is-not-raised-or-handled
This is madness! How can this *not* be affecting *everyone* doing any
animations with any complexity at all?
Am still digging to see whether I can concoct a workaround/hack, but
the odds don't look good. *sigh*
Kent
>
> - Show quoted text -
Pavan Podila
Pavan Podila, MVP - Client App Dev
Author of WPF Control Development Unleashed
--| Blog: http://blog.pixelingene.com |--
Kent Boogaart
I replaced this line of the VisualStateManager class:
// storyboards are separate so are started independently
group.StartNewThenStopOld(element, transition.Storyboard,
dynamicTransition);
with this:
var masterStoryboard = new Storyboard();
masterStoryboard.Children.Add(transition.Storyboard);
masterStoryboard.Children.Add(dynamicTransition);
// storyboards have been combined into single parent storyboard
group.StartNewThenStopOld(element, masterStoryboard);
and it frigging works. Granted I need some error checking and further
thought around that code, but did I mention it frigging works!?
At least now I have a way forward. Looks like I'm fixing VSM and
depending on a custom build. Not sure how that's gonna fly in a big
corporate, but the alternative is unpredictable behavior in the
controls I've been developing.
Pavan, I'm going to update the StackOverflow post and Connect issue
with the details of this once I have it rounded out. I will credit you
with the inspiration, of course!
Cheers,
Kent
On Feb 17, 12:11 pm, Pavan Podila <pavan.pod...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Kent,
> I have had problems in the past for storyboards not firing their
> completed events. What I have realized is that if you replace a Storyboard
> directly, without first stopping it, you may see some out-of-order Completed
> events. In my case I was applying newer Storyboards to the same
> FrameworkElement, without stopping the earlier Storyboard and that was
> giving me some issues. Not sure if your case is similar but thought I'll
> share this tidbit.
>
> Pavan
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Did some digging and found that this is due to the VSM depending on
> > the Storyboard.Completed event to be raised:
>
> > dynamicTransition.Completed += delegate
> > {
> > // when Completed is raised, everything works fine. But
> > Completed is not always raised!
> > };
>
> > So it seems this bug is as a result of another long-standing and
> > seemingly ignored bug on Connect:
>
> --| Blog:http://blog.pixelingene.com|--- Hide quoted text -
Pavan Podila
Pavan
-----------------------------------
Pavan Podila
http://blog.pixelingene.com
Marlon Grech
Microsoft MVP for Client App
Mark Smith
Peter O'Hanlon
Peter O'Hanlon
Mark Smith
Pete Brown
The XBAP model isn’t really suited for public web applications: both Silverlight and HTML offer better choices there for most applications. When doing a web crawl of the public internet, I don’t believe we found a single xbap in the wild. I do recall seeing demos of one or two in the past, but those were for in-store apps that ran behind a firewall.
In IE9, xbap support is turned off by default in the internet zone, and prompts (I believe) in the intranet zone. Most firefox users either didn’t care to use xbaps, or simply turned off that support themselves.
This has nothing to do with the “death of WPF” and everything to do with realizing that for most applications, there are far better models than xbap. When i was a consultant, I stopped considering xbap once Silverlight came out. I now recommend Silverlight, Click Once WPF apps, or even that other popular web technology used for dancing hamsters and whatnot ;)
WPF is an awesome client app technology. I don’t really think it belongs in the browser, IMHO.
Pete
Pete Brown - Developer Division Community Program Manager - Windows Client
twitter: @pete_brown |blog/site: http://10rem.net
Silverlight 4 in Action – Now available!
Peter O'Hanlon
Peter O'Hanlon
Pete Brown
I actually personally killed Xbap, because I wanted to sell more copies of my book ;)
Pete Brown - Developer Division Community Program Manager - Windows Client
twitter: @pete_brown |blog/site: http://10rem.net
Silverlight 4 in Action – Now available!
From: wpf-di...@googlegroups.com [mailto:wpf-di...@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of Peter O'Hanlon
Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2011 4:38 PM
To: wpf-di...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [WPF Disciples] XBAP
Oh I agree, but it was fun to yank your chain. I can't think of a single time when I even considered using an XBap - ClickOnce would be my first thought in situations that might have prompted it.
Mark Smith
The XBAP model isn’t really suited for public web applications: both Silverlight and HTML offer better choices there for most applications. When doing a web crawl of the public internet, I don’t believe we found a single xbap in the wild. I do recall seeing demos of one or two in the past, but those were for in-store apps that ran behind a firewall.In IE9, xbap support is turned off by default in the internet zone, and prompts (I believe) in the intranet zone. Most firefox users either didn’t care to use xbaps, or simply turned off that support themselves.This has nothing to do with the “death of WPF” and everything to do with realizing that for most applications, there are far better models than xbap. When i was a consultant, I stopped considering xbap once Silverlight came out. I now recommend Silverlight, Click Once WPF apps, or even that other popular web technology used for dancing hamsters and whatnot ;)WPF is an awesome client app technology. I don’t really think it belongs in the browser, IMHO.Pete
Pete Brown - Developer Division Community Program Manager - Windows Clienttwitter: @pete_brown |blog/site: http://10rem.netSilverlight 4 in Action – Now available!
Laurent Bugnion
FWIW the large WPF project I was working on at Siemens was planning (and I believe still is) on using XBAPs as an alternate mode of deployment for some specific users. The joke about dancing hamsters, in that context, is not very funny considering that some guarantees have been offered by Microsoft at the time. Like Mark said, not adding features is a thing, but removing features is another. Of course Siemens is only the biggest global ISV for .NET… Good luck explaining that move to them though.
I really hope that it was removed for Firefox, but will remain available on IE. That is still going to be a pain to explain to the end users, but at least there is a workaround.
Good night,
Laurent
Pete Brown
Can you tell me more about why an xbap would work for users, but clickonce would not?
I’m not familiar with the guarantees. However, Xbap support is still there in IE, and works fine in intranet scenarios as I understand it (I haven’t tried it myself). I did mention that below, I’m not sure how you missed it. It’s in IE9, it hasn’t been pulled. It’s just not a good model for the internet.
I still think dancing hamsters are funny, but that may be just me ;)
Shawn Wildermuth
Isn’t it likely not a removal of the feature, but a lot effort to keep up with changes in the dev model for FF? I have no idea, but assuming it was a decision to just remove it seems unlikely.
Thanks,
Shawn Wildermuth
Note: This was typed on a big ole laptop so any misspellings and punctuations are completely my fault…not my phone’s.
Pete Brown
Again, intranet is probably fine. I’d consider moving it to Silverlight if you get the opportunity, but that’s not based on any internal roadmap knowledge for xbap.
Pete
Pete Brown - Developer Division Community Program Manager - Windows Client
twitter: @pete_brown |blog/site: http://10rem.net
Silverlight 4 in Action – Now available!
Pete Brown
As an aside, community members have said to us time and again that we should deprecate and/or remove WPF features that just didn’t pan out one way or another, or are duplicated in the same or another technology, to reduce the size of the framework and the complexity of learning WPF.
Now you see why that’s difficult to do. There is always *someone* who relied on a feature for some app somewhere. J
Pete
Pete Brown - Developer Division Community Program Manager - Windows Client
twitter: @pete_brown |blog/site: http://10rem.net
Silverlight 4 in Action – Now available!
From: wpf-di...@googlegroups.com [mailto:wpf-di...@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of Pete Brown
Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2011 6:42 PM
To: wpf-di...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [WPF Disciples] XBAP
Again, intranet is probably fine. I’d consider moving it to Silverlight if you get the opportunity, but that’s not based on any internal roadmap knowledge for xbap.