How long since you have seen the "Dictionary already contains ClassInfo ..." error for the Model Editor?

Old XAFers can remember this old sporadic issue caused by a Visual Studio bug that could not be fixed on the IDE side for years (learn more...). We were frustrated by it no less than our users, and this April (15.1.11+, 15.2.8+, 16.1+) we finally found a way to bypass this nasty behavior of an internal IDE assemblies cache on our side by changing the process of  loading assemblies at design time. This was quite a risky change, but so far our testing of many projects under various circumstances went well. We also have not received user reports on the original problem or other side effects with our designers since then (more than 8 months).

That said, I wanted to explicitly clarify with the XAF community whether it is really gone after our changes or not. Please leave a comment below on whether you have seen this error with the latest XAF versions OR you already cannot recall when it occurred last time. If this still bothers you, I would kindly ask you submit a ticket using the Support Center and attach a project where this behavior is stably reproducible, exactly as this kind guy did in the past.

My team and I look forward to hearing from you!

How to show a specific View at application startup, right after the logon window or after loading the main window

I have recently updated my old KB article with several solutions and wanted to bring this for your information:

https://www.devexpress.com/kb=K18099

Here is the information on typical scenarios to get a better understanding of where this article can be applied: 

"One may want to show a dialog view at startup (after logging in). Typically, this view appears after the successful logon and allows a user to select or edit personal or global settings such as current password, company, currency, language, etc. Also, it may be often required to display this View as modal before a user can access the navigation menu or any other forms in the application. In other scenarios, it may be required to display a kind of notifications popup right after loading the main window, with unread messages, active orders, etc."

As always, it would be great to hear whether you are already using these techniques (specify approach #) in your XAF apps or you had to invent new solutions for a similar task. I am looking forward to hearing from you in the comments.