Roadmap

[ghost]

With what could be considered a "version 1.0" finally approaching, I thought I'd share a few thoughts on the roadmap of what I've got planned for MA.M. This is also a chance to voice concerns and suggestions on the direction of the framework.

1.0

Specific issues that I want to fix/resolve before v1 are: #117, #136, #162, and finish off the 'pivot' control I've been working on. I'm not saying other issues won't be included in that, but those are my first goals.

Demo App

The existing demo is kinda crap, to be honest. It was only meant as an easy way to dump all the styles/controls in to show off what is available.

I'd like to revamp that, perhaps using Caliburn Micro. Perhaps going closer to the WinRT samples where there are various samples hosted in a 'shell'. That way things won't get as cramped, easier to add new features, etc.

Post 1.0

Post v1, I don't intend to add any new features to v1. Bug fixes, any performance boosts and PRs, sure, but not new features. Does that mean the death of MA.M? No. That'll mean work will start on v2. Specifically, v2 may have incompatibilities with v1 - this may be due to optimisation or removal/replacement of features.

Two examples that spring to mind are:

• optimise the way resources are imported into the project - this may require several styles and names to be rewritten. A prime example of this is MetroWindow shouldn't need ResourceDictionaries to be imported, but it does at the moment.
• Rename and restructure many of the resource keys (particularly colours and brushes) so that they make more sense. Much of the crappy names come from the Silverlight Cosmopolitan theme which was the base of this library. This may result in keys that you are using but aren't in use by controls will be dropped. I'm looking at creating a XAML resource optimisation tool to detect unused resources to aid in this.

After the "cleanup", new features will resume where appropriate. There may be further restyling of existing styles to get it more inline with WinRT.

MahApps.Metro.Resources

These are in need of a drastic overhaul. It's a very limited library in terms of the content in it as well as documentation on how to use it.

I'd rather not, but I may end up dropping this if I can't find the time to at least do the documentation. Ideally an app that shows the icons and how to consume them ala Metro Studio would be great.

[thoemmi]

Is MahApps.Metro.Resources still necessary? Templarian published the Windows Phone Icon Pack at GitHub. Because of the frequent additions of icons, I don't think it makes sense to keep MahApps.Metro.Resources up to date.

[ghost]

@thoemmi I didn't realise he'd done that, and it certainly invalidates MahApps.Metro.Resources.Standalone. The "non-standalone" version is specifically tied to the colours of MA.M's theme - I think the brush is set to BlackColourBrush or something. It does make them easier to consume. Edit: clarification - Templarians stuff isn't directly consumable as they're just Canvas' exported. They'd need to be imported into a resource dictionary/whatever to be used in WPF

It may be worth me spending my time a bit better and writing a more universal app that works with his repo, allows customisations of fill, etc, than maintaining MA.M.R though

[ghost]

Actually, that wouldn't make a terrible idea for a sample app. I'll ponder that some more, thanks :)

[alexkopy]

Something just occurred to me, with the legal trouble MS got into for use of the word Metro and apparent rename to Modern UI, are you considering any naming changes to align?

[ghost]

Until such time that I receive a C&D, no, there are no planned name changes.

[shiftkey]

I'll rewrite this once I've got a new stable release out the door. A lot has changed over the last few months, but much of what @VikingCode mentioned before is still relevant...