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by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 1/24/2012 11:40:09 PM
Ironically, my last release of MVVM Light V3 was about fixing bugs in templates and making them better. In the process however, seems that I introduced a regression bug in the WPF4 project templates. Yep shit happens. How do I know if I have the bug? Check the Programs and Features control panel, and look for MVVM Light. If the “Version” column shows 3.0.2.19, you have the bug. If it shows anything higher, you don’t. For instance, the new version with the bug correction is 3.0.3.19. Also, any ...
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by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 1/2/2012 8:13:28 PM
The current version of MVVM Light had a couple of issues in the project templates. The most annoying one was causing a problem when creating new projects: The GUIDs used to uniquely identify the project were in fact not re-generated properly every time, and we ended up with the same GUID in every new project. The symptoms are the following: If you side-load an MVVM Light application, and then side-load another one, you will see that the first one is overwritten. Note however that this is only an ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 12/18/2011 9:10:12 PM
I just pushed two big updates to MVVM Light setup components. MSI installers with Silverlight 5 support The MSI installers are available on Codeplex. The current version supports Silverlight 3, Silverlight 4, Silverlight 5 (new), WPF 3.5 SP1, WPF 4, Windows Phone 7.0 and Windows Phone 7.1. The installer for V3 is available, as well as the one for V4 beta. NuGet support including Silverlight 5 I also pushed a new version of the NuGet packages which includes Silverlight 5. To install MVVM Ligh ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 12/10/2011 7:29:43 PM
Here we go! After the Microsoft team released version 5 of Silverlight yesterday, MVVM Light is available for this version of the framework too. I did not create the installer yet (that will take a few more days), but you can download the source code and build it yourself easily. Source code on Codeplex. Instructions to build the code. With this latest release, this puts the number of supported frameworks to 8: .NET 3.5 SP1, .NET 4, Silverlight 3, Silverlight 4 ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 12/9/2011 7:59:03 PM
Microsoft just released the version 5 of Silverlight! It’s a great news and I really want to congratulate the whole team on this impressive collective effort. The official announcement is on the Silverlight team blog! The purpose of this article is not to be exhaustive about the list of features (there have been, and will be, many more very detailed articles such as this series on the Silverlight blog) but rather to explain why this version in particular makes me happy to be a Silverlight devel ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 12/7/2011 9:36:33 PM
I was recently made aware of a couple of people having issues with WCF services (or ASP.NET applications) when using the MVVM Light project template for Silverlight. There is a blog post and a StackOverflow question, so what exactly is happening there? Well in fact it is pretty simple when you know how Silverlight connects to web services. Due to the security model of Silverlight, the application cannot connect to a web site if it is not originating of this very website. In laymen’s terms, it m ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 9/25/2011 9:57:41 PM
In the developer preview of Windows 8, I just noticed a breaking change in the way that data bindings react to the PropertyChanged event. First a bit of background: Often, objects that are databound to the UI are simple data objects (also called ViewModels) that implement the INotifyPropertyChanged interface. This interface is very simple and defines just one event, the PropertyChanged event, that needs to be raised by the ViewModel when one of its property changes. It is what makes the ViewMod ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 9/25/2011 8:47:24 PM
Microsoft loves MVVM and INotifyPropertyChanged so much that they included this very useful interface twice in the new WinRT framework. Unfortunately, only one of these is working correctly (and the other one is likely a bug, remnant from the past ) When implementing INotifyPropertyChanged, make sure that you select the correct one! The one you want to use is into Windows.UI.Xaml.Data. The old one, the one you DON’T WANT is into System.ComponentModel (the same namespace it was in WPF and Silver ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 9/17/2011 7:32:12 PM
Last week, Microsoft held their long awaited Build Windows (or simply "Build") conference in Anaheim CA. About 5000 people packed the convention center to discover the latest version of the Windows operation system: Windows 8. This is a very major iteration (much more than the Windows Vista –> Windows 7 transition) (and also, it is an early preview so it is quite unfinished ;) As such, we will definitely need a bit more time to play with it before we can express a truly informed opinion. Of ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 9/12/2011 4:00:20 PM
This morning, I published MVVM Light V4 beta1 in the form of an MSI. The installation instructions are detailed on the MVVM Light installation page. Please make sure to uninstall previous versions before you install V4 beta1. There are quite a few changes in this version, and I plan to blog about various features in the coming days. As usual, stay tuned! Change log General changes Added XmlnsDefinitionAttribute for GalaSoft.MvvmLight.Command in Extras assembly. Setup Created an ins ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 9/1/2011 8:28:01 PM
After I released the MVVM Light installer, I got a note saying that parts of the installation failed on non-English systems (in that case a German installation of Expression Blend and Visual Studio). Specifically, what failed was the code snippets on Visual Studio, and the project and item templates in Expression Blend. After investigating, it is correct that these two particular features of MVVM Light were installed to language-coded folders. Correcting the issue for Expression Blend was easy ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 8/6/2011 11:50:59 PM
For a very (too) long time, the installation procedure for MVVM Light sucked. It involved downloading and unzipping files in various locations. Unfortunately, creating an automated installer is not completely trivial because of the variety of files that are getting installed: Binaries, Code Snippets, Project and Item Templates, all require different locations, and all that for VS2008, VS2010, Blend 4 and Silverlight 3, Silverlight 4, WPF3.5 SP1, WPF4, WP7.0 and now WP7.1 “Mango”. Thankfully, MV ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 6/15/2011 2:39:30 PM
In MVVM Light V4, I am proposing a new RelayCommand snippet, making it easier to declare and initialize a RelayCommand. I came up with a syntax that allows having the RelayCommand and its initialization in one convenient location. I am looking for feedback, so leave your comments below!! RelayCommand This is the code created by the code snippet after expansion, for a simple RelayCommand. private RelayCommand _testCommand; /// <summary> /// Gets the TestCommand. /// </summary> pu ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 5/27/2011 7:29:45 PM
At IdentityMine, we had the chance to develop a few applications featuring the new Windows Phone 7 features coming up in the update codenamed “Mango”. This series will showcase a few of the new features included in Mango that we used in those apps. Part 1: Adding a secondary live tile to the start page. Part 2: Starting a Bing Maps navigation Part 3: Updating a Live Tile locally (coming soon). Part 4: Adding your app to Bing Search Extras (coming soon). The feature Windows Phone 7 Mango fe ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 5/24/2011 9:53:56 PM
At IdentityMine, we had the chance to develop a few applications featuring the new Windows Phone 7 features coming up in the update codenamed “Mango”. This series will showcase a few of the new features included in Mango that we used in those apps. Part 1: Adding a new live tile to the start page. Part 2: Starting a Bing Maps navigation. Part 3: Updating a Live Tile locally (coming soon). Part 4: Adding your app to Bing Search Extras (coming soon). The feature One of the most recognizab ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 5/24/2011 5:41:20 PM
On Tuesday the 24th of May 2011, the new version of the Windows Phone 7 SDK codenamed “Mango” was released to the public in beta. This is a huge iteration with an extremely large number of new APIs. Most exciting, the version of the Silverlight framework now used in Windows Phone 7 is Silverlight 4. Thanks to this, I was able to recompile the MVVM Light Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 based on the Silverlight 4 version. This is interesting because the Silverlight 3 version had a few hacks I had to b ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 5/20/2011 4:56:31 PM
A couple of days ago I had the wonderful surprise to find a mention (and a link!) to MVVM Light on USAToday.com. The article talks about the new USA Today app available for Windows Phone 7. MVVM Light is mentioned as well as JSON.NET just after the high quality of the development tools is mentioned: “That same high bar for tools extends into the community as well. MVVM Light and JSON.Net were extremely useful moving past mundane tasks and instead getting to the business of building our app.” – ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 5/7/2011 8:18:31 PM
There was already a version of MVVM Light on Nuget before. However the old version did not support Windows Phone 7. This is now corrected. Also the new version now adds a ViewModelLocator to your project and includes it in App.xaml. What is NuGet? NuGet is a mechanism allowing to add packages (assemblies, source code…) to an existing project. All versions of MVVM Light are supported (WPF3.5, WPF4, Silverlight 3, Silverlight 4, Windows Phone 7). In order to install NuGet and learn more about t ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 5/6/2011 8:52:15 AM
I published the sample code from my presentations about Windows Phone 7 at TechDays Switzerland. I also published the Powerpoint slides on Slideshare (Windows Phone 7 Overview / Windows Phone 7 Deep Dive). One of the talks is available as a video on Channel 9. I expect the other one to be made available soon, stay tuned for an update. Windows Phone 7 Overview View more presentations from Laurent Bugnion Windows Phone 7 Deep Dive View more presentations from Laurent Bugnion ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 4/14/2011 2:16:49 PM
At MIX11, I am releasing a new preview of MVVM Light version 4. This new preview contains one small change and one large change. ObservableObject replaces NotifyPropertyChanged In the previous preview, I introduced a new class named NotifyPropertyChanged. However, I got a few suggestions to rename this class to ObservableObject, which is indeed a better name. In BL16, NotifyPropertyChanged was deleted and replaced by ObservableObject. Nothing else changes, just the name. ObservableObject is a ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 4/13/2011 1:04:27 PM
Here is the sample code I demoed in my MIX11 session “Deep Dive MVVM”. Please download the Zip file, and then unblock it in Windows Explorer by right-clicking it, and then selecting Properties. If you see an “Unblock” button, please click it. You can then extract the content of the Zip file on your hard drive. The slides are also available for download. Last year’s session To fully understand this session, an understanding of what MVVM is should be available. I recommend the following links: ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 3/24/2011 6:35:34 PM
Quick announcement: I just had the extreme pleasure to talk at the UK TechDays online conference (organized over LiveMeeting) and had about 100 persons in the session, thanks to all for allowing me to talk to you about MVVM! I just pushed the whole sample code as well as the slides to a SkyDrive folder, so feel free to download and experiment. And don’t forget: A recording of session with similar material but with 30 minutes more time for additional samples is online for your viewing pleas ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 3/20/2011 3:36:56 PM
Over the past few weeks, I have worked hard on a few new features for MVVM Light V4. Here is a second early preview (consider this pre-alpha if you wish). The features are unit-tested, but I am now looking for feedback and there might be bugs! Bug correction: Messenger.CleanupList is now thread safe This was an annoying bug that is now corrected: In some circumstances, an exception could be thrown when the Messenger’s recipients list was cleaned up (i.e. the “dead” instances were removed). T ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 3/15/2011 6:42:36 PM
MVPs are well known for their good heart (like the GeekGive initiative shows) and Client App Dev MVP Gregor Biswanger is no exception. At the latest MVP summit (beginning of March 2011), he took over a DVD about WPF 4 and Silverlight 4 and asked a few Microsoft superstars to sign it. Right now, the DVD is auctioned on eBay and of course the proceeds will go to a charitable work: The German League against Cancer (Deutsche Krebshilfe). The post is in German and English (scroll down for the English ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 2/10/2011 11:20:00 PM
The public (you!) has spoken, and “Deep Dive MVVM” was selected (along with 11 other open call talks) out of 217 proposals. There were 17’000 votes! These are pretty amazing numbers, and believe me when I tell you that I still didn’t completely realize what just happened! I want to really underline the outstanding quality of many of the talks that were proposed. I decided not to reveal my votes, because I just know too many of the candidates and I had only 10 votes but let’s just say that so ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 2/7/2011 11:24:25 PM
I just pushed to Codeplex an update to the MVVM Light source code. This is an early preview containing some of the features that I want to release later under the version 4. If you find these features useful for your project, please download the source code and build the assemblies. I will appreciate greatly any issue report. This version is labeled “V4.0.0.0/BL0014”. The “BL” string is an old habit that we used in my days at Siemens Building Technologies, called a “base level”. Somehow I lik ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 1/25/2011 6:16:32 AM
Vote for: “Deep Dive MVVM” Vote for: “Exploring a Blendable Windows Phone 7 Application” Last year, the MIX team started a new concept with an open call for sessions. People from the community were invited to submit talks about pretty much anything, and the public voted to select which sessions they wanted to see. It was a huge success, since 150 sessions were submitted, of which 13 sessions were picked (don’t hold me accountable for the numbers, they are plucked from my me ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 12/4/2010 10:48:42 PM
I started tweeting a list of “protips” (or whatever you want to call that) related to the Twitter for Windows Phone 7 application. Since I worked as integrator on this app, my tasks involved integrating design assets in all screens, and so I had an insider view on all the screens (and that is really a LOT of screens :) Seeing some comments about the app made me understand that most users out there don’t realize how rich the application is, and how many features are available. So without further ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 12/4/2010 7:40:54 PM
Last Thursday, the Silverlight Firestarter event took place in Redmond, and was streamed live to a large audience worldwide (around 20’000 people). Approximately 30 if them were in Wallisellen near Zurich, in Microsoft Switzerland’s offices. This was not only a great occasion to learn more about the future of Silverlight and to see great demos, but also it was the very first meeting of the Silverlight User Group of Switzerland (SLUGS). Having 30 people for a first meeting was a great success, e ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 11/23/2010 5:49:46 PM
On December 2nd, Microsoft is having an exciting event in Redmond: The Silverlight Firestarter. This is a whole day dedicated to this amazing technology, something like an extension of PDC if you like. The program is an exciting overview covering most of the aspects of Silverlight application development, by some of the best experts in the field. (All times are Swiss time - 9 hours) Watch with us! In order to enjoy this event even more, the newly formed Silverlight User Group of Switzerla ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 11/13/2010 9:13:13 AM
I spent this week in Berlin in company of about 5000+ other geeks at Microsoft’s TechEd Europe. I had experienced the conference for a very short time last year as I spent just 2 days helping on the Silverlight booth at the Technical Learning Center. This year however I was invited to give two talks and participate in a panel of experts. Taking Advantage of Microsoft Expression Blend to Build Silverlight 4 Applications: This session went pretty well even though it was at 6PM on Tuesday. The room ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 10/30/2010 8:47:26 PM
Latest update (and hopefully last update): Microsoft has published a few posts to clarify the debate. Please consider the following: PDC and Silverlight by Bob Muglia PDC Thoughts by Steve Ballmer *NEW* Silverlight Questions by Scott Guthrie Silverlight is dead. Long live Silverlight! by Tim Heuer Committed to Silverlight by John Papa ----------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: I am a Silverlight MVP and book author, and as such I have an ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 10/26/2010 7:22:40 AM
Today I have been invited by Microsoft Switzerland to present three of our awesome Windows Phone 7 applications on stage at their yearly Shape conference. It was a great moment, and I felt super proud to show the IMDb app, the Twitter app and the SBB Mobile app. The response was excellent, I didn’t have one single demo effect, was able to stream a movie preview live from the IMDb app, to show most features of the Twitter app, to load a timetable and purchase a ticket from the SBB app, and all th ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 10/26/2010 6:49:17 AM
I guess this is one of these places where using Blend is an advantage… since I do these operations mostly with the help of the tool, the XAML is generated and I don’t need to think about it too much. There is a trick when you add objects (for example Styles or a ViewModelLocator) to App.xaml when it already has merged resource dictionaries. The syntax is a bit convoluted, so here we go: <Application.Resources> <ResourceDictionary> <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionarie ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 7/22/2010 11:24:13 PM
This is a hotfix to correct the issues with the MVVM Light templates for Windows Phone 7. Who is it for? Use this hotfix if (and only if): You have MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 installed. You are using the new developer tools beta for Windows Phone 7. Why a hotfix? The hotifx is needed because of changes in the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 assemblies (regrouping of classes in different namespaces and/or different assemblies) as well as some other changes (manifest structure, etc). The ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 7/22/2010 9:24:13 AM
This is a hotfix to correct the issues with the MVVM Light templates for Windows Phone 7. Who is it for? Use this hotfix if (and only if): You have MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 installed. You are using the new developer tools for Windows Phone 7 (RTM). Why a hotfix? The hotifx is needed because of changes in the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 assemblies (regrouping of classes in different namespaces and/or different assemblies) as well as some other changes (manifest structure, etc). Th ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 7/14/2010 2:49:03 PM
An article was published at JupiterJS.com (titled “JavaScript vs Silverlight”) arguing that JavaScript is better than Silverlight. Unfortunately, there is no way to post comments on that page (weird, really) so I decided I would post my answer here. First let me state that I do not think that Silverlight is an opponent, nor a threat to JavaScript. I love both, I write both, and both are helping me to create better experiences. Also, Silverlight has grown to be much more than “just” a web plug- ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 7/14/2010 12:49:03 AM
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 7/7/2010 9:54:49 PM
Yesterday, I published the source code of the MultiTouch Behavior for Windows Phone 7 on Codeplex (http://multitouch.codeplex.com). Meanwhile, Davide Zordan (the founder of this project) started to modify the Silverlight 4 version of the behavior to make it API compatible. Eventually, the goal is to share all the API signature, and as much code as possible. We would like to extend this to the WPF version as well, in order to have a consistent landscape of multitouch on all 3 platforms. Together ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 6/28/2010 3:07:39 PM
(book cover might change before publication) As I am reaching the end of the writing phase of Silverlight 4 Unleashed (to be published at Sams), I thought I would give a little more information about this book. The book’s idea Because I didn’t want to merely write an update to the existing Silverlight 2 Unleashed, I proposed a different approach to my editor: Using Silverlight 2 Unleashed (which was bringing people up to speed with Silverlight 2 pretty much from scratch) as the basis for t ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 6/28/2010 1:07:39 AM
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 6/20/2010 6:19:15 PM
I finished implementing version 0.1/beta1 of a multitouch behavior for Windows Phone 7 and need beta testers. What is the Windows Phone 7 multitouch behavior? Multitouch in Windows Phone 7 is not super hard, but there are a few things that need to be taken in account (such as the orientation of the device). In addition, it is very easy to get unwanted effects on a small screen (for example that the element becomes too big/too small). Also, in some cases the proportionality should be kept for a s ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 6/8/2010 11:06:05 PM
When you work with the ApplicationBar in Windows Phone 7, you notice very fast that it is not quite a component like the others. For example, the ApplicationBarIconButton element is not a dependency object, which causes issues because it is not possible to add attached properties to it. Here are two other issues I stumbled upon, and what workaround I used to make it work anyway. Code to demonstrate the issues and the workaround can be downloaded here! Finding a button by name returns null Si ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 6/8/2010 9:06:05 AM
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 5/19/2010 7:17:17 PM
An interesting question from one of the MVVM Light users today: Is there an MVVM-friendly way to get a DataGrid’s SelectedItems into the ViewModel? The issue there is as old as the DataGrid (that’s not very old but still): SelectedItem (singular) is a DependencyProperty and can be databound to a property in the ViewModel. SelectedItems (plural) is not a DependencyProperty. Thankfully the answer is very simple: Use EventToCommand to call a Command in the ViewModel, and pass the SelectedItems coll ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 5/19/2010 5:17:17 AM
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 4/18/2010 9:45:06 PM
Considering the number of emails that are sent to me asking for support for MVVM Light toolkit, I find myself unable to answer all of them in sufficient time to make me feel good. In consequence, I started to send the following message in response to support queries, either per email or on the MVVM Light Codeplex discussion page. Hi, I am doing my best to answer all the questions as fast as possible. I receive a lot of them, however, and cannot reply to everyone fast enough to make me happ ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 4/18/2010 2:15:44 PM
Ah, the joy of new releases… You will find that the MVVM Light Toolkit works fine with Visual Studio 2010 RTM and Blend 4 RC except for a few adjustments: Blend templates The path to the Expression Blend 4 project templates changed. If you start Expression Blend 4 RC now, you will likely not see the MVVM Light templates in the New Project dialog. New Project dialog with MVVM Light To restore the templates, follow the steps: Open Windows Explorer Navigate to C:\Users\[username]\Do ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 4/9/2010 10:40:03 PM
Unfortunately, in the current version of the Windows Phone 7 Silverlight framework, it is not possible to attach any command on the ApplicationBarMenuItem and ApplicationBarButton controls. These two controls appear in the Application Bar, for example with the following markup: <phoneNavigation:PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar> <shell:ApplicationBar x:Name="MainPageApplicationBar"> <shell:ApplicationBar.MenuItems> <shell:ApplicationBarMenuItem ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 4/4/2010 7:59:22 AM
He he I start to sound like Microsoft… Anyway… I just released a service pack (SP1) for MVVM Light Toolkit V3. Why? Well mostly because I worked a bit more with the Windows Phone 7 tools that were released at MIX0, and I noticed a few things that could be better in the Windows Phone 7 template. Also, I only found out at MIX that you can actually install custom project templates for Visual Studio Express. For some reason I thought it was not possible. The best way to solve these issues is t ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 3/16/2010 10:19:40 PM
Update: Seems that not everyone is running on the latest and greatest, which is understandable. To avoid confusion, I added the version of the framework for which these samples are available. In the next few days, I will try to port them to other versions in order to have working samples in WPF3.5, WPF4, SL3 and SL4. Please be patient, thanks! Update 2: I reconfigured the samples to include all the external assemblies you need to run them (including Microsoft.Practices.Unity.dll, System.Windo ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 3/16/2010 4:42:53 PM
V3 of the MVVM Light Toolkit was released during MIX10, after quite a long alpha stage. This post lists the new features in MVVM Light V3. Compatibility MVVM Light Toolkit V3 can be installed for the following tools and framework versions: Visual Studio 2008 SP1, Expression Blend 3 Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5 SP1 Silverlight 3 Visual Studio 2010 RC, Expression Blend 4 beta Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5 SP1 Windows Presentati ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 3/16/2010 4:40:46 PM
During my session “Understanding the MVVM pattern” at MIX10 in Vegas, I showed some components of the MVVM Light toolkit V3, which gave me the occasion to announce the release of version 3. This version has been in alpha stage for a while, and has been tested by many users. it is very stable, and ready for a release. So here we go! What’s new What’s new in MVVM Light Toolkit V3 is the topic of the next post. Cleaning up I would recommend cleaning up older versions before installing V ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 3/10/2010 6:01:28 PM
Getting ready to fly to Vegas and MIX10 is really an exciting time! It is also a very busy time, because we are working on a few projects that will be shown on stage, I have my presentation to prepare, and of course as always the book… though these days it has been a bit on the back burner to be honest ;) I arrive in Vegas on Sunday evening around 10PM, so I won’t be able to make it to the traditional IdentityMine dinner this year. I am sure it will be fun nonetheless! My session: Understan ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 3/5/2010 7:48:58 AM
Microsoft has published the schedule for the MIX10 sessions. I have a sweet spot, and I dearly hope that it stays this way (Last year I had a great spot, but it was changed last minute and then I had a much better one, “competing” against Vertigo and their Playboy app… yeah try to explain to a bunch of geeks that MVVM is better than Playboy… good luck with that ;) Anyway, this year my sweet spot is on the very first day of the conference (there are workshops on Sunday, but this qualifies as pre- ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 2/18/2010 6:10:36 PM
Here is a quick news from the MVP summit in Redmond. Things here are amazing, with a lot of good news (that will be made public at MIX, so in the mean time I cannot say anything more about it, except that it is awesome). The summit is, amongst other things, an amazing way to connect with other MVPs and with the product group. This is an amazing community to be a part of, full of really smart people. In that sense, it was a pretty big surprise for me when I got an email announcing me that I had ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 2/1/2010 5:26:05 PM
Often when you write XAML, you wish you could ignore a property temporarily. In code, it is easy to do: Just comment out the line where the property is set, and you are good to compile. LayoutRoot.Background = new SolidColorBrush(Colors.Red); //LayoutRoot.DummyProperty = "Ignored"; /* LayoutRoot.Another = "Ignored too"; */ In XAML it is not so easy, because XML (of which XAML is a dialect) does not have line comments, but only block comments. You can comment out a whole XAML element, but not j ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 1/21/2010 3:06:26 PM
The MIX conference this year had an open call for sessions, and 12 sessions were voted by the public out of 169. Surprisingly (or maybe not that surprisingly in fact), 3 sessions out of the 12 have the MVVM pattern in their title. This shows a lot of interest for this pattern which is helping the developer to create decoupled, testable, blendable applications in Silverlight and in WPF. Since my session is one of the three, I decided to contact the other two speakers (we happen to run in the sam ...
Update: Shawn Wildermuth has changed his session and will be talking about Silverlight Security instead. The MIX conference this year had an open call for sessions, and 12 sessions were voted by the public out of 169. Surprisingly (or maybe not that surprisingly in fact), 3 sessions out of the 12 have the MVVM pattern in their title. This shows a lot of interest for this pattern which is helping the developer to create decoupled, testable, blendable applications in Silverlight and in WPF. Sinc ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 1/20/2010 11:27:02 AM
The Binding class has a few properties that can be set to a text, including spaces. The properties StringFormat, TargetNullValue and FallbackValue are such properties. These properties exist in WPF and newly also in Silverlight 4. For example, you can type: Since these strings are typed within the Binding markup extension in XAML, they do not take quote signs, which leads the XAML editor to be a little confused, as the color coding shows: The text after the “This” turns to red in the figure ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 1/19/2010 12:28:40 PM
Update: The session is officially on. See the MIX10 website. This morning, very early (or very late depending how you see it), I learned that one of the sessions I submitted to the MIX 2010 open call for speakers had been picked by the public. Out of 169 sessions, only 12 were picked, so you imagine my feelings right now. Honestly, I am sure that this will be a good session, but it could have gone either way, and I had prepared myself mentally for the alternative possibility too. Understand ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 1/14/2010 1:32:54 PM
The Silverlight 4 documentation is available online from Microsoft. However, it is not the fastest way to find documentation. Instead, you should know that the Silverlight 4 documentation is available online, it is just a little bit hidden. “Also available for…” When you navigate to an MSDN page, you will find a box letting you know that the page you are looking for is also available for Silverlight 3, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5 or .NET 4. For example, here is what the page for System.Windows.Controls ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 1/6/2010 12:12:15 AM
This year Microsoft decided to have an open call for sessions for the MIX 2010 in Las Vegas. This conference, in case you don’t know it yet, is a great 3 days about modern client technologies, such as ASP.NET, Windows Presentation Foundation and of course Silverlight. This year, MIX is taking place from the 15th to the 17th of March 2010 in the Mandalay Bay hotel in Vegas. Today, the voting began! I didn’t count them, but there seems to be more than 100 sessions lined up, and the competition ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 12/17/2009 4:49:31 PM
One of the MVVM Light Toolkit’s user requested that I add the possibility to pass the EventArgs of an event to the ICommand that it is bound to through the EventToCommand trigger. At first I was a bit reluctant because it seems like a transgression of the rule that says you should avoid to have too much knowledge about the UI layer in the ViewModel. For example, if you have a RelayCommand in the ViewModel that expects a MouseEventArgs, it kinds of binds you to a certain kind of UI element, which ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 12/5/2009 9:06:12 AM
The project and item templates allowing you to create pre-wired MVVM Light applications are now also available for Expression Blend 3 and Expression Blend Preview for .NET 4 and Silverlight 4. The installation process is manual, but not difficult at all (unzipping a few files to predefined paths). I did document the installation process here. Of course the templates are also available for Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010, as well as the binaries. The source code is available on Codeple ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 11/30/2009 10:56:14 PM
Update: The templates are also available for Expression Blend 3 and Expression Blend Preview for .NET 4 and Silverlight 4. I just published the latest alpha version of the MVVM Light Toolkit. I will post more about the new features in this alpha version, but the most exciting is probably that with this release, the MVVM Light Toolkit works in Windows Presentation Foundation 4 and in Silverlight 4 (in Visual Studio 2010). There is no automatic installer for this version yet, but I wrote a pa ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 11/18/2009 7:58:06 PM
Well people, it was an amazing keynote. Silverlight 4 beta was just presented by Scott Guthrie at the Professional Developer Conference 2009 in Los Angeles. As soon as Silverlight 3 was released a few months ago, the Silverlight team started working on new features to create what will be a really exciting release. As of now, the Silverlight 4 beta bits and all the necessary tools are available for download. Probably the best place to start is Tim Heuer (Silverlight evangelist for Microsoft) w ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 11/18/2009 8:51:27 AM
NotAtPDC is an awesome initiative from within the .NET community that allows people who cannot for any reason attend one of the major conferences (such as PDC, MIX etc…) to share knowledge, have fun, interact and generally have all kind of good times without leaving their home or office. This year, I cannot make it to the Professional Developer Conference because of multiple reasons (too much work, too many travels ;)) but I will talk to the NotAtPDC conference 2009! My talk is titled Expre ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 11/13/2009 11:55:39 PM
Update (11/14/2009): The sample application is available as a zip file, and I also published the Silverlight version to be executed directly in your browser. The advantage of pushing very early software to the advanced users is that bugs are detected before too many people suffer from them, and features requests can be placed and implemented without pain. This is exactly what happened with the MVVM Light Toolkit V3 alpha 2. Bug correction This applies to the new “send with token” feature o ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 11/7/2009 10:03:54 PM
I met Philippe Schutz at the TechDays in Geneva early this year, and have been following him on Facebook since then. He does amazing work with logos and icons, and it is only natural that I have thought of him when I decided to get a new logo and icons for the MVVM Light Toolkit. A brand identity is quite important to me even in private projects. This is why I created the site GalaSoft (www.galasoft.ch) years ago, and started using this “brand” consistently as well as the cat logo (more about t ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 11/5/2009 2:57:43 PM
Update (11/14/2009): I updated EventToCommand with a new feature: You can now pass the EventArgs of the fired event to the invoked command. See this post for more explanations. Here is another early release of the MVVM Light Toolkit V3 (Alpha 2). I decided to release gradually and early as soon as a new part of this new version is ready, to allow advanced users to install, test and give feedback about the new features. If you haven’t seen it yet, the features available in V3 Alpha 1 are describ ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 10/27/2009 8:05:02 PM
This is a super early release of the next version of the MVVM Light Toolkit. Please enjoy with care, be aware that this version is not fully tested and not feature complete by a long shot. The binaries are available for download. In addition, the source code for V3 alpha is up to date in Codeplex, so you can get the code from there. What’s new in the Messenger? So far the changes are: Bug correction: A “collection was modified” error could occur if a recipient was registering for a messag ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 10/27/2009 5:26:58 PM
The Shape conference is a new web technologies oriented conference organized by Microsoft Switzerland. It is held in Zurich Oerlikon, and has two tracks, one design-oriented and one development-oriented. Best of Swiss Silverlight award The Best of Swiss Silverlight awards are rewarding the best Silverlight applications developed in Switzerland this year. The winners are: 3rd place: Siemens with an application to optimize energy efficiency in buildings. Very happy about that, because ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 10/18/2009 7:25:56 PM
Update: There was a small error in the Silverlight version of the application. The code used to navigate to a different webpage was wrong (in ApplicationExtensions.cs). I wrote this article in the Austrian mountains and did not have the web to check the code, sorry about that ;) I updated the source code. If you downloaded the source code before the 19th of October, 8AM GMT, you want to load the correct version. Apologies!! It is often difficult for large applications with multiple, loosely co ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 10/18/2009 12:42:31 PM
Responding to a few requests from MVVM Light Toolkit users, I opened a project on Codeplex and published the installer as well as the source code there. http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com/ Formally, nothing much changes, my site and my blog remain the main location to find information on the toolkit. Being on Codeplex gives the project more visibility, and provides a convenient place for discussions too. Happy coding! Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook| Fli ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 10/4/2009 11:06:30 AM
I am happy and proud to announce that the MVVM Light Toolkit V2 has been published! Shortcut: Jump directly to the installation instructions. Excerpt from the Get Started page: The main purpose of the toolkit is to accelerate the creation and development of MVVM applications in WPF and Silverlight. Like other MVVM implementations, the toolkit helps you to separate your View from your Model which creates applications that are cleaner and easier to maintain and extend. It also creates testabl ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 9/27/2009 1:16:05 PM
Update: MVVM Light Toolkit V2 has been released. Please use the new installer to upgrade your installation. Ever since I released V1.1 of the MVVM Light Toolkit, I have received wonderful and constructive feedback from users. Most of it is flowing into V2, which is almost ready (I am still fighting a little with MSI installers and project/item templates for one feature I am particularly happy about, which is making project templates and item templates available in Expression Blend. That’s right ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 9/26/2009 7:15:00 PM
Like most of us have found out the hard way, Silverlight 3 and Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5 are two quite similar beasts, but not totally the same. Silverlight is often presented as a subset of WPF (in fact, some features are available in Silverlight but not yet in WPF; generally speaking, though, it is true that Silverlight has less features than its big sister WPF) (yeah WPF is a girl, don’t tell me you didn’t know ;)) No Commands in Silverlight One of the missing parts is Commanding. ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 9/6/2009 6:55:14 PM
The new version of the MVVM Light Toolkit was just posted. So what is new? Well, to be honest not much. The biggest change is the new installer. It is now a standalone MSI installer, because some of you reported some issues with the previous ClickOnce based setup. I personally liked the ClickOnce setup (and I got a few good comments about it), but of course a standalone, offline installer is more versatile, so be it :) The following shortcuts are created in Start / All programs / Laurent ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 9/6/2009 1:47:26 PM
I just published a new version of the MVVM Light Toolkit. For more information about the toolkit in general, please refer to the Get Started page on my website. Also, more blog posts will follow soon and help you get started with the MVVM Light Toolkit, and also help you understanding how you can use it to solve various issues related to the development of View Model based applications in Windows Presentation Foundation and in Silverlight. The installation procedure is explained in details on m ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 9/5/2009 12:07:48 PM
We already talked often about providing design time data to your designers in Windows Presentation Foundation and in Silverlight, thus enabling them to work visually in design editors such as Expression Blend or the Visual Studio designer (codenamed Cider). The goal here is very simple: Designers should see something on their design surface. This sounds simple, but it can get quite tricky. Since Blend and Cider run (parts of) your application’s code to render the WPF or Silverlight elements, yo ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 8/31/2009 11:05:43 PM
I found this collection of vector arrows through Robby Ingebretsen. The designer Sander Baumann created 56 different arrows in vector format (Adobe Illustrator). I converted these arrows in XAML. The arrows are available in the different formats (right click and choose “Save Target As”): DrawingBrush (WPF only): You can use the arrow icon as a brush to “paint” an element, typically a Rectangle. If the painted element is resized, the DrawingBrush will also resize seamlessly thanks to its vec ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 8/6/2009 6:21:52 PM
My good friend and super hero programmer Pete Blois posted an impressive collection of samples using and extending Expression Blend behaviors and triggers on Codeplex some time ago. There are a few real treasures in there, and some of them that I would like to integrate in my MVVM Light toolkit, thus avoiding to reinvent the wheel. I am still checking the license (the Samples use the MS-PL license) but I think it should work just fine. One feature in particular that I find super helpful is Invo ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 7/11/2009 12:17:16 AM
The big news today is of course the launch of Silverlight 3. Microsoft organized a big event in San Francisco (I was invited, but could not make it to SF in time, unfortunately :() and there was a big celebration. Together with Silverlight 3 RTM, we were given Expression Blend 3 Release Candidate (including SketchFlow). This is not the final version, but it is as close as it is ever going to be before it is officially released. This version should be feature complete, so there is already a lot t ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 7/8/2009 3:50:54 PM
With V1.1.0.0 of the MVVM Light Toolkit, an automated Setup application is provided to make it much easier to install, manage, update and uninstall the Toolkit files. For more information about the MVVM Light Toolkit, check the “Get Started” page. Prerequisites The MVVM Light Toolkit and its Setup application run on Windows operating system only, and require the .NET framework 3.5 SP1 to use the MVVM Light Toolkit. If you didn’t install it already, you can do so here. Installing the Setup ...
Update: This post is obsolete, and has been replaced by a newer and better blog post. I keep this post in my blog for historical reasons and to avoid breaking links, but please refer to the new blog post from now on!! With V1.1.0.0 of the MVVM Light Toolkit, an automated Setup application is provided to make it much easier to install, manage, update and uninstall the Toolkit files. For more information about the MVVM Light Toolkit, check the “Get Started” page. Prerequisites The MVVM Light To ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 7/8/2009 8:50:54 AM
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 6/17/2009 5:17:42 AM
To make development of WPF and Silverlight applications according to the Model-View-ViewModel pattern easier, I have put together a small toolkit which should speed up the creation of such applications by automating certain tasks. The toolkit must be installed manually for now. My next task is to prepare an installer, which should allow installing everything automatically, and also checking for upgrades, upgrading automatically and uninstalling the toolkit. For now however, a little manual work ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 6/16/2009 10:17:42 PM
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 6/15/2009 5:17:28 AM
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 6/14/2009 10:17:28 PM
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 5/27/2009 2:41:30 PM
As some of you now, I have been spending most of my free time (which is not much these days once I am done with the amazing projects I am working on at IdentityMine, and the time spent with the family) working on a very simple, very light MVVM toolkit. This toolkit will encompass A DLL with classes that make MVVM applications easier to create and “wire”. A “base” ViewModel class that contains utility methods that ViewModels typically need. A command class that can be use ...
by Laurent Bugnion via Silverlight on 4/29/2009 9:25:25 PM
At the last MVP summit in March, some of us were informed that a new MVP expertise had been created for Silverlight. They asked a small number of existing MVPs with strong Silverlight competency (including yours truly) if they would agree to switch to that new expertise. I must admit that I have not always been very happy with the thought of a new expertise dedicated only to Silverlight. In my opinion, it is very important to keep Silverlight close to Windows Presentation Foundation, and to ...
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