This weekend was fairly productive, although not as much as I would have liked. I got through around 10 pages of content, and I really had wanted to get 12 or more done. I mostly finished my section on Navigation, with just a couple more pages on Express Applications needing to get finished when I fix some problems with my install.

A couple interesting realizations I've had over the last couple days... First, styling isn't nearly as central to the story of Avalon as I first thought. With some changes coming in the new CTP, you have the ability to set a template (aka visual tree) directly on an element. Which meant, from a story perspective, you get to incorporate templates directly inline with the controls section. Makes for a much better story, and hey, it actually is pretty usefull!

Second, I had an interesting conversation with Mr. Sells regarding the relative importance of navigation for application authors. It's been such a central part of the whole "Best of Win32, Best of the Web" spiel that we've been talking about for so long, I hadn't really dug into the real motivation for what it helps with. There is the obvious thing - leveraging people's experience with web navigation in your application. Really bringing that web user experience to desktop applications. But beyond that, why did web navigation really add value? I'll have to think about this some more - I have some ideas but I want to spend some time on it.

Lastly, writing is real work. I keep finding myself looking for excuses not to write. I'll get stuck on a particular section, and hey!, the lawn needs to be mowed (well, it really did). This working from home thing is hard. The number of distractions that you have at your home is huge, and without the discipline of always working from home, it is way too easy for me to go off and do something else. I need to figure out a way to keep on track.