WPF College Courses

I was happy to learn [via Lee] that the FootHill College of Los Altos, CA is offering introductory courses on Windows Presentation Foundation and other .NET technologies. The courses include one on .NET Deployment that I'm guessing (I couldn't find a syllabus for that) includes ClickOnce, the most superior application deployment technology out there for rich client apps.

This is a great opportunity for anyone in the Bay Area wanting to pick up on Microsoft's next generation presentation sub-system and framework APIs.

Cal Schrotenboer, the instructor for these courses, says the cost for California residents is $100 for a class. And since these classes are also offered in an online format, you can enroll from anywhere.

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Great apps powered by ClickOnce

I've posted previously about XBAPs, but here are a couple links to standalone Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications that use the ClickOnce deployment model.

ITN has a cool new news -video application called ITN Hub Player, accompanied by a Windows Vista sidebar gadget. See http://www.itn.co.uk/vista/

OTTO, the 2nd largest online retailer in the world, just went live with a very impressive ClickOnce-deployed WPF application which completely changes the online store as you know it. See http://www.otto.de/vista

This app also uses Windows CardSpace and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), both .NET Framework 3.0 components and part of Windows Vista.

I love seeing ClickOnce being used in mainstream consumer oriented applications, and will be posting about these more often. And that's not just 'cause my team owns WPF Deployment and works closely with the ClickOnce team. Having had my share of munging around with MSIs, I think ClickOnce is by far the most superior application deployment technology out there for rich client apps on Windows. It provides a sophistocated update mechanism for your apps, taking the pain out of that process. If you haven't heard of it before, or aren't using it in your .NET apps, I think the apps above will make you reconsider.

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