Our team has just released the next version of Vidyano. From the official website:

Since we officially launched the first version of Vidyano, we have been getting a lot of valuable feedback from our customers and people playing around with the trial version. A lot of this feedback has already been processed and incorporated in this build, going from bug fixes to new features.

New features and improvements

• OpenPage / HandledByController Part Generator: It is now possible to add OpenPage or HandledByController command buttons on a page by using the wizard. Developers can also choose which argument to pass by simply selecting it from a list that contains all compatible arguments in a given context.

• Event-system for cross module communication: Modules are now able to communicate with each other by using the new event-system. Modules can register for specific events on which they would like to listen.

• Constructor arguments: Developers can now use the Vidyano designers to add constructor arguments to page controllers. This comes in handy when using it in combination with the new OpenPage part generator.

• Module designers: The look and feel of the module designers has been improved slightly so that more space is available to display the layout of the page.

• Improved page layout parsing: The Vidyano page designer has been improved so that it is able to render a lot more xaml scenarios.

• Larger models: Previous versions of Vidyano had trouble with larger models; this version has been improved so that the performance doesn't suffer too much.

• Visual Studio code optimized: We have been reworking some internal code in order to better support changes in the Visual Studio environment, such as the upcoming VS2010 (expect a CTP version soon).

• Shell Adorners: The default layout of the ShellContainer has been improved with additional AdornerDecorators.

• Versioning: This is also the first public version of Vidyano which shows your modules automatically take advantage of the versioning system. Modules which have been build and deployed against the previous version don't have to be recompiled or deployed as they will use the internal adapter system.

As stated in the list of improvements, we have begun working on our Visual Studio 2010 compatible release. All Visual Studio related code (EnvDTE) has been refactored in a separate assembly, Vidyano.VisualStudio.VS90, so that we can adapt to changes more quickly. We expect to release a public CTP version pretty soon.

Besides the work on Vidyano for Visual Studio 2010, I would like to add that we have a very exciting roadmap ahead of us. So, expect a lot more new features and improvements over the next couple of months !

A couple weeks ago I was able to present a small demo of Vidyano to Katrien De Graeve, developer evangelist at Microsoft Belgium & Luxemburg. I showed some of the capabilities as well as some finished applications which were build with the help of Vidyano. After seeing all this in action, Katrien decided it was time to create a demo video so that other developers may be aware of what’s out there.

Last friday I went back to Zaventem, where we recorded a Dutch and an English video. In these video’s I explain some of the basic concepts of Vidyano and build a demo application on top of the Adventure Works database. If you are interested in finding out how you can write applications like the one in my previous blog post, watch them on the MSDN Chopsticks site:

Interview in Dutch	Interview in English

Source

A couple weeks ago, Rhea finished the development on Cura Comfort, a software product targeting the healthcare market. Cura Comfort was created with the help of Vidyano and already turned out to be a huge success.

The goal of this project was to facilitate the end users in keeping detailed files for patients each time they visit. Also, the application needs to run on Netbook pc’s, so system requirements are something to keep a close eye on. As visits usually to take no longer that 10 minutes, entering this data in the application needed to be fast and intuitive. Master data for this application comes from another, already in production, application called Cura. This application is able to plan visits for all care providers in a doctors practice any lots more. So synchronization between these two applications had to be developed as well.

First off, a custom Vidyano skin was written for the application, which shows the client’s profile color scheme. We’ve also chosen to implement a breadcrumb system for navigating between pages in the application. As you can see in the screenshots below, the result is quite beautiful. The entire application took merely 6 weeks to develop (from start to finish) by 3 juniors and 1 senior developer.

I will try and get a short movie from the application in action, which will give you a better idea on how it works. A more detailed case study can also be found on the Vidyano website, here.