Long, long ago, Microsoft shipped a multi-step tutorial with their C++ compiler called scribble (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa314520(VS.60).aspx). Scribble is a tiny drawing application wherein the user is allowed to draw freehand lines on the screen. It had a variety of preferences designed to show off the technology including: thin or thick pens, multiple open scribble documents (MDI - now, seemingly defunct), split window view, print, print preview, and email.

The purpose of this tutorial was to walk a developer through many of the common steps required to build a windows application using the current release of the compiler. In this case, this included MFC version something, Microsoft Visual C++ version something, and some version of the Microsoft Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) in order to email your scribble masterpiece to friends and family.

In attempting to learn the wealth of tools and technologies thrown at me recently, I decided it might be wise to take a step back and go through that old tutorial with a new perspective.

In the entries to follow I hope to walk through the old Scribble tutorial step by step using WPF as the user interface technology. I will make all of the code available somehow (we’ll see if live spaces supports it or not).

If you want to run or modify the project, you’ll need to install a few things including .NET Framework 3.0, the new version of the Windows SDK, some form of Visual Studio 2005, and the VS 2005 extensions for WPF.