Sunday, October 25, 2009
It means a combination of “Creativity and Coding”. Yes now a Designer can be a coder as well. Perhaps you are thinking that it’s a crap :-). Nope it is real. I never wanted to go to the programming world. I think it is a bit boring and monotonous for a designer. Some couple of month back our CTO comes and requested me to learn XAML. He explained all the prospects of XAML in a positive mode. At that time I was thinking that what my CTO is saying is truly a fantasy web world. One question was hitting repeatedly in my mind and that is “CAN I DO THAT?”.
Yes XAML is truly a fantasy playground for a designer. After getting 2 months successful training (Thanks to our CTO and special thanks to Taufiq for being an excellent XAML teacher) on XAML I got the confident and started doing coding immediately with the other developers :-). Ok cut off the story of mine and let discuss the prospect of XAML.
XAML is a new descriptive programming language developed by Microsoft to write user interfaces for next generation managed applications. Extensible Application Markup Language or is a new declarative language that is used in Windows Framework and Windows Presentation Foundation. Introduced with .NET Framework 3.0, XAML is harbinger of declarative (in contrast with imperative using coding) programming model. In Workflow Foundation, workflows can be created using code as well as XAML. Even fully XAML-based solutions are possible with no code at all! This not only gives flexibility of no-compilation-needed to applications, it also opens up a window of possibility for entirely non-technical persons (like business analysts) to design workflows. (Though Workflow Foundation is targeted for programmers, experiments are underway around the globe for making it feasible for business analysts to model processes in it).
Let me ask a simple question. Can you build a Combo box on a button? Or can you customize a button for a Combo box? Very difficult or even not possible in other programming languages but it can be done in XAML with a few lines of code. So a Designer can play around wherever he/she wants to. So the bottom line is Designer can now think out of the box, can do outstanding mockups for web or desktop application.
For XAML, we need to have a basic knowledge on XML, CSS. You will get lot of tutorials for XAML on the net. So learn XAML and discover the future.
Enjoy!
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