MVVM

Model-View-ViewModel "light" toolkit and other MVVM related posts

Session material from TechDays BE and NL

UPDATE: Added the videos Note: Like all material on this blog, this blog post and all the referenced material are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. You are free to reuse material from this post and from the referenced material, but you must attribute this material to me, and link to this blog post, or to my website. Thanks! I had the chance to be invited again to speak at TechDays in Belgium (Antwerp) and in the Netherlands (The Hague), and delivered 3 sessions ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, March 10, 2013 6:29 PM | Comments (3)

MVVM Light V4.1.27.0 in Nuget

I just pushed a new version of MVVM Light to Nuget. The new version is 4.1.27.0. The difference towards the previous version (4.1.26.1) and this one is that I am not depending on the CommonServiceLocator Nuget package instead of providing my own. However, the CommonServiceLocator does not exist for all MVVM Light-supported frameworks. We have the following situation: WPF3.5 SP1, WPF4, WPF4.5: Depends on the CommonServiceLocator Nuget package. Silverlight 4, Silverlight 5: Depends on the CommonServiceLocator ......
Print | posted on Posted On Thursday, February 14, 2013 9:44 PM | Comments (2)

MVVM Light V4.1.26 change log

I just published the change log for MVVM Light V4.1.26, which is available on Nuget only at this time. The full version is available here, while the “libraries only” version is available here. I am working on an installer which will also add a few more changes to the templates and one bug fix in the code snippets. Stay tuned for that installer as soon as I figure a few things out. Important note: V4.1.26 is only available on Nuget (here and here) at the current time. An installer will be published ......
Print | posted on Posted On Saturday, January 5, 2013 11:10 PM | Comments (3)

A fix for the design time error in MVVM Light V4.1

For those of you who installed V4.1 of MVVM Light and created a project for Windows Phone 8, you will have noticed an error showing up in the design surface (either in Visual Studio designer, or in Expression Blend). The error says: “Could not load type ‘System.ComponentModel.INot... from assembly ‘mscorlib.extensions’” with additional information about version numbers. The error is caused by an incompatibility between versions of System.Windows.Interactivity. Because this assembly ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, November 11, 2012 11:26 PM | Comments (8)

Oredev 2012: Summary and source code

This week, I had the pleasure to be invited to talk at Oredev, a really cool conference taking place in Malmo, Sweden. The whole event is awesome, including a very special dinner on Monday including sauna and swimming in a 6 degrees cold Baltic sea, and a reception with dinner at the town hall, including the mayor himself. Considering Malmo is a town of 300'000 inhabitants, it is a pretty nice occasion and the historical building itself is really worth seeing. For those interested, I placed my pictures ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, November 11, 2012 9:27 PM | Comments (0)

MVVM Light V4.1 with support for Windows Phone 8

Today is a very exciting day: After the official release of Windows 8 (and Microsoft Surface!) on Friday, and the official release of Windows Phone 8 on Monday, the Build conference is starting! This is the conference in which we will learn all about the developer experience for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. As a partner of Microsoft, I had the privilege of trying out some of the new things early, and this gave me the opportunity to port MVVM Light to Windows Phone 8 (it was already running for ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, October 30, 2012 7:11 PM | Comments (12)

“Using the MVVM pattern in Windows 8” in MSDN Magazine

These days I am swimming in Windows 8 code, and I must say it is a good feeling. This gives me the occasion to push MVVM Light and a few other components of mine to their limits, and to fix or improve a few things on the fly. All this goodness will be available in V4.1 which is scheduled shortly after Windows 8 launch. In spite of the busy schedule, I couldn’t resist writing an article for MSDN magazine about, you guessed it, the MVVM pattern and MVVM Light in Windows 8. It is an article that goes ......
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, October 10, 2012 9:29 PM | Comments (1)

Adventures in Windows 8: Solving activation errors

Note: I tagged this article with “MVVM” because I got a few support requests for MVVM Light regarding this exact issue. In fact it is a Windows 8 issue and has nothing to do with MVVM Light per se… Sometimes when you work on a Windows 8 app, you will get a very annoying issue when starting the app. In that case, the app doesn’t not even start past the Splash screen. Putting a breakpoint in App.xaml.cs doesn’t help because the app doesn’t even reach that point! So what exactly is happening? Well when ......
Print | posted on Posted On Monday, September 10, 2012 9:17 AM | Comments (0)

Adventures in Windows 8: Understanding and debugging design time data in Expression Blend

One of my favorite features in Expression Blend is the ability to attach a Visual Studio debugger to Blend. First let’s start by answering the question: why exactly do you want to do that? Note: If you are familiar with the creation and usage of design time data, feel free to scroll down to the paragraph titled “When design time data fails”. Creating design time data for your app When a designer works on an app, he needs to see something to design. For “static” UI such as buttons, backgrounds, etc, ......
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 11:53 PM | Comments (10)

#mvvmlight V4 update for Win8 RTM

With Windows 8 RTM out of the doors (at least for some of us), it was also time to create an update to MVVM Light. I selected the V4 RTM to do this (V4.0.23).This RTM version was released a few weeks ago with no much bells and whistles because I was just too busy to write much about it. Now after some vacation, I will resume blogging on all my favorite topics including of course MVVM Light. Upgrade Upgrading the installations should not require an ununistall, so try to simply run the MSI downloaded ......
Print | posted on Posted On Friday, August 24, 2012 9:33 PM | Comments (1)

#mvvmlight V4 for Windows 8 RP is available

I took a moment out of a very busy weekend to publish an update to MVVM Light for Windows 8 Release Preview. You can download the DLLs from the Codeplex site. Or, if you use Nuget, you can update the MVVM Light package, which will install the newest DLLs. For more information about Nuget, visit Nuget.org as well as the MVVM Light Nuget page. Note: I also took the occasion to fix an issue where the DLLs for the .NET 4 framework were not signed. The DLLs contained in this package are properly signed. ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, June 3, 2012 10:40 PM | Comments (8)

Fixing the certifications issues for the Windows 8 App Store and #mvvmlight

If you used the latest MVVM Light version for Windows 8, you may have noticed that a couple of issues cause your app to fail the Windows App Certification Kit. It is really quite simple: By mistake, I published the debug version of the assemblies instead of the release version. This causes the certification to fail. I already published an update on Nuget, so if you have created your application and added the DLLs using Nuget, you can update with the steps described her (scroll down to the “Updating ......
Print | posted on Posted On Monday, May 21, 2012 7:30 PM | Comments (0)

Celebration! 120’000 downloads for #mvvmlight, 2 copies of Expression Studio to win

That is a symbolic milestone: Last week, MVVM Light reached the bar of 120’000 downloads on http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com, the site that has been hosting source and installers since the beginning of the project (100'000 downloads) and on Nuget, the popular package manager for .NET (20'000 downloads). More information about Nuget and MVVM Light. Scroll down to have a chance to win a copy of Expression Studio V4! MVVM Light started its “career” on Codeplex in October 2009. Back then it was intended ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, April 29, 2012 9:05 PM | Comments (3)

ICommand issue in Windows 8: Correction!

Well I'll be… I stand corrected! I recently published a blog post stating that you need to declare a command as ICommand (instead of RelayCommand) if you want it to work in Windows 8. I even went as far as to modify the MVVM Light code snippets that are used to create commands. In fact, scratch that post… I was wrong! I got a few people writing to me and letting me know that RelayCommand works just fine for them. And now, after I tested again, I cannot reproduce the issue! So I need to be clear, ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, April 24, 2012 9:09 PM | Comments (0)

#mvvmlight V4RC available on #nuget

I just published the MVVM Light V4 RC packages to Nuget. Note that this is still technically a preview, so the main package is still V3. The V4 packages are available here: Package with libraries and content: When you install this package into a “virgin” application (i.e. an application without ViewModelLocator, preferably a brand new application), it installs a new ViewModel folder with a MainViewModel, ViewModelLocator and adds an entry into the App.xaml file to intialize a the ViewModelLocator ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, April 22, 2012 9:13 PM | Comments (4)

Declaring an ICommand in Windows 8 Consumer Preview

[Update 24/4/2012]

Well I'll be… after I posted this, a few people wrote to me and told me they are unable to repro the issue. I then tested again and indeed, it works. No idea why I couldn't get it to work in the first place.

More details here. Sorry about the confusion people!
Print | posted on Posted On Friday, April 20, 2012 4:43 PM | Comments (7)

Slides and source code for my past talks this year

I had the chance to be invited to talk at various conferences this year already, and I promised to post the slides and source code, so here it is! MVVM Applied: From Silverlight to Windows Phone to Windows 8 Belgium, Netherlands, Bulgaria The Model-View-View Model pattern is a common denominator between applications using XAML to create the user interface. First applied in WPF, it was then easily ported to Silverlight and Windows Phone development. With WinRT and the Metro-style applications, XAML ......
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, April 18, 2012 12:28 AM | Comments (1)

Fixing the #mvvmlight code snippets in Visual Studio 11

If you installed the latest MVVM Light version for Windows 8, you may encounter an issue where code snippets are not displayed correctly in the Intellisense popup. I am working on a fix, but for now here is how you can solve the issue manually. The code snippets MVVM Light, when installed correctly, will install a set of code snippets that are very useful to allow you to type less code. As I use to say, code is where bugs are, so you want to type as little of that as possible ;) With code snippets, ......
Print | posted on Posted On Friday, April 6, 2012 12:07 PM | Comments (6)

MVVM Light V4b1 for Windows 8 Consumer Preview (with installer)

I just pushed the following to Codeplex: A new MVVM Light project template for Windows 8 Consumer Preview. This template appears in the File, New Project dialog and allows you to create a Metro style app already wired with MVVM Light. An updated Windows 8 installer for MVVM Light. Preconditions: This installs MVVM Light for Windows 8 only. You can install it side-by-side with the standard MVVM Light for Silverlight, WPF and Windows Phone. Where do I get it? You can download the MSI from: http://mvvmlight.codeplex.c... ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, April 1, 2012 9:43 PM | Comments (2)

Impressions, slides and code from TechDays Belgium and Netherlands

Update: Posted the video of “MVVM Applied” below. This week I was “on tour” in Belgium and Netherlands and presented 3 times: “MVVM Applied, From Silverlight to Windows Phone to Windows 8” (in Belgium and Netherlands) The goal of this session was to make people feel confident that the skills they acquired working in various XAML frameworks (Silverlight, Windows Phone, WPF, Surface, etc) are going to help them tremendously when developing Windows 8 applications. It was a session packed with code, ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, February 19, 2012 11:30 PM | Comments (3)

Solving the ObservableCollection bug on Windows 8

If you tried to build applications for Windows 8 with XAML/C#, you may have noticed an annoying issue: If you have a list controls (for example a GridView) and you bind the ItemsSource property to a property of type ObservableCollection<Som... on your ViewModel, the GridView is not updated when the collection’s content changes. The CollectionChanged event is raised properly, but it is not honored by the binding system. Thankfully, this is a temporary bug, and it should be solved in the ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, February 19, 2012 6:11 PM | Comments (2)

Screenshots of my #mvvm demo at #techdaysbe

Today I gave a talk in TechDays in Belgium about MVVM in Silverlight 5, Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. This was the first time I gave that particular talk, and in addition keep in mind this is a developer preview, meaning that it is not finished, and not always stable. I had a few surprises with this build. For example from time to time, the new “Metro style applications” just cannot be launched anymore. Nothing that a simple reboot cannot fix… but I’ll come back to that in a moment. A couple of ......
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, February 15, 2012 11:52 PM | Comments (2)

Bug fix: WPF4 project template for #MVVMLight V3

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 version ......
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, January 25, 2012 12:40 AM | Comments (0)

New MVVM Light templates with bug fixes

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 ......
Print | posted on Posted On Monday, January 2, 2012 9:13 PM | Comments (0)

MVVM Light installers and Nuget (including Silverlight 5) #mvvmlight

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 Light into ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, December 18, 2011 10:10 PM | Comments (1)

MVVM Light for Silverlight 5 is on Codeplex #mvvmlight

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, Silverlight 5, Windows Phone 7.0, ......
Print | posted on Posted On Saturday, December 10, 2011 8:29 PM | Comments (5)

Silverlight 5 is released!

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 developer ......
Print | posted on Posted On Friday, December 9, 2011 8:59 PM | Comments (15)

MVVM Light template and WCF services (or any ASP.NET application for that matter)

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 means ......
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, December 7, 2011 10:36 PM | Comments (4)

MVVM Light Toolkit for Windows 8 (preview) #mvvmlight #win8

I was very optimistic when I first saw Metro style apps coded in C# on Windows 8, because for the most part they are not much different than the well known XAML/C# pair on Silverlight or WPF. This led me to brag a bit about probably having a port of MVVM Light ready “in a few days”. Of course I didn’t take in account that I would have a great time the week after //build in Seattle, with fantastic weather and tons of friends to have dinner and conversations with. Needless to say, the few days turned ......
Print | posted on Posted On Monday, October 3, 2011 9:28 PM | Comments (21)

Breaking change: Raising PropertyChanged with string.Empty in WinRT / Windows 8

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 ViewModel ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, September 25, 2011 11:57 PM | Comments (4)

Quick tip: Select the correct INotifyPropertyChanged in Windows 8 / WinRT

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 Silverlight). ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, September 25, 2011 10:47 PM | Comments (11)

Detecting design mode in Windows 8/WinRT

One of the very useful features of the MVVM Light toolkit is to help with the creation of design time data, in order to give something to see on the design surface (Expression Blend, Visual Studio designer). This is especially useful when designing list controls such as ListBox, ComboBox, etc. Without design time data, these controls will remain empty, and the designer will not see what he is working on. This can cost a lot of time and cause frustration. Detecting design mode was always incompatible ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, September 25, 2011 9:02 PM | Comments (1)

Quick tip: Adding objects in resources.

If you are using MVVM-Light style ViewModel creation (often referred to as “view-first”), you might have noticed that you cannot build if you have an object in the view’s resources. It means that the code below does not compile. <UserControl.Resources> <vm:MyViewModel x:Key="MyViewModel" xmlns:vm="using:Application... /> </UserControl.Resources> <UserControl.DataContext... <Binding Source="{StaticResource MyViewModel}" /> </UserControl.DataContex... I was ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, September 20, 2011 3:17 AM | Comments (1)

MVVM Light V4 beta1

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 installer. Messenger ......
Print | posted on Posted On Monday, September 12, 2011 6:00 PM | Comments (12)

MVVM light V3 installer for non-English systems

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 enough ......
Print | posted on Posted On Thursday, September 1, 2011 10:28 PM | Comments (0)

Automated installer for MVVM Light V3!

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, MVVM ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, August 7, 2011 1:50 AM | Comments (2)

Proposing a new RelayCommand snippet for MVVM Light V4

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> public RelayCommand ......
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, June 15, 2011 4:39 PM | Comments (23)

MVVM Light Toolkit patch for WP7 Mango Beta

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 build ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, May 24, 2011 7:41 PM | Comments (5)

Is your application powered by #mvvmlight?

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.” – Tim ......
Print | posted on Posted On Friday, May 20, 2011 6:56 PM | Comments (21)

MVVM Light V3 on NuGet (now with WP7 support)

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 this ......
Print | posted on Posted On Saturday, May 7, 2011 10:18 PM | Comments (9)

My MVVM talk’s material is online (#uktechdays)

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 pleasure. Deep ......
Print | posted on Posted On Thursday, March 24, 2011 7:35 PM | Comments (0)

MVVM Light V4 preview 3 (BL16, MIX11 edition!!) #mvvmlight

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 very ......
Print | posted on Posted On Thursday, April 14, 2011 4:16 PM | Comments (6)

Deep Dive MVVM samples #mix11 #deepdivemvvm

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: “Understanding ......
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, April 13, 2011 3:04 PM | Comments (11)

MVVM Light Toolkit V3 Alpha 1

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 message type in ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, October 27, 2009 8:05 AM | Comments (0)

Clean shutdown in Silverlight and WPF applications

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 coupled ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, October 18, 2009 7:25 AM | Comments (13)

MVVM Light Toolkit on Codeplex

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| Flickr | LinkedIn ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, October 18, 2009 12:42 AM | Comments (0)

MVVM Light Toolkit V1.1.1: What’s new?

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 Bugnion ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, September 6, 2009 6:55 AM | Comments (3)

Installing the MVVM Light Toolkit

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 my ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, September 6, 2009 1:47 AM | Comments (6)

Detecting design time mode in WPF and Silverlight

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, you ......
Print | posted on Posted On Saturday, September 5, 2009 12:07 AM | Comments (18)

Polymorphic Podcast: MVVM, Blend, Integrator in WPF and Silverlight

Some time ago, Craig Shoemaker asked me if I wanted to talk about design time data in MVVM on his Polymorphic podcast, and of course I said yes. Following in the steps on my buddies Josh Smith and Tim Heuer was a bit scary, but hey, this is what we do, right, following the steps of giants and trying not to look too silly while we do it :) It was a fun talk, and I think we managed to convey the message pretty well. We talked about the Model-View-ViewModel pattern, especially related to creation of ......
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, August 12, 2009 4:46 AM | Comments (0)

Expression Blend Samples InvokeDataCommand bug

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 InvokeDataCommand. ......
Print | posted on Posted On Thursday, August 6, 2009 6:21 AM | Comments (3)

Silverlight 3, Blend 3 and the MVVM Light Toolkit

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 to ......
Print | posted on Posted On Friday, July 10, 2009 12:17 PM | Comments (2)

Installing the MVVM Light Toolkit V1.1.0.0 (obsolete)

Update: This post is obsolete, and has been replaced by a newer article. Please refer to the Get Started page for details!!
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, July 8, 2009 3:50 AM | Comments (2)

MVVM light toolkit (Silverlight edition) posted

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 must ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, June 16, 2009 5:17 PM | Comments (8)

MVVM light toolkit for WPF and Silverlight

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. Update: An automated Setup for the WPF and Silverlight MVVM Light Toolkit is available. Please use the automated Setup from now on. If you are unable to use the automated setup for any reason, please contact me at laurent@galasoft.ch. More information about the Setup and ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, June 14, 2009 5:17 PM | Comments (13)

Building MVVM Light from Codeplex

I just published an article describing how to get the source code from Codeplex, build it, unit test it, get all the DLLs and install them to replace a previously installed version. It’s not very complicated, but it is good to have this information in one location. The article is available at http://www.galasoft.ch/mvvm... Happy coding! Laurent Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, March 20, 2011 8:40 PM | Comments (0)

DEEP DIVE MVVM at #MIX11

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 some of ......
Print | posted on Posted On Friday, February 11, 2011 12:20 AM | Comments (6)

MVVM Light V4 preview (BL0014) release notes

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 like this ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, February 8, 2011 12:24 AM | Comments (14)

MVVM Light V4 preview 2 (BL0015) #mvvmlight

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). The method ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, March 20, 2011 4:36 PM | Comments (10)

My proposals for the #MIX11 open call

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 memory ) I was very honored ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, January 25, 2011 7:16 AM | Comments (2)

Back from TechEd Europe 2010 (Berlin) #tee10

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 ......
Print | posted on Posted On Saturday, November 13, 2010 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

Adding a ViewModelLocator and Merged Dictionaries to App.xaml

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.Merg... <ResourceDictionary ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, October 26, 2010 8:49 AM | Comments (5)

MVVM Light Hotfix for Windows Phone 7 developer tools RTM

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). The MVVM Light assemblies ......
Print | posted on Posted On Thursday, July 22, 2010 11:24 AM | Comments (4)

MVVM Light Toolkit V2: What’s new?

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 testable applications ......
Print | posted on Posted On Saturday, October 3, 2009 11:06 PM | Comments (2)

MVVM Light Toolkit Messenger V2

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, ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, September 27, 2009 1:16 AM | Comments (34)

Using RelayCommands in Silverlight 3 and WPF

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 3 One of the missing parts is Commanding. ......
Print | posted on Posted On Saturday, September 26, 2009 7:15 AM | Comments (43)

New articles about the MVVM Light Toolkit V1.1.1

To help you get started with the MVVM Light Toolkit V1.1.1, I published two new articles: Creating a new MVVM Light application in Visual Studio This article will show you how to use Visual Studio to create a brand new MVVM Light application in Windows Presentation Foundation and in Silverlight. Understanding the MVVM Light application sample When you create a new MVVM Light application, the application can be run and serves as a sample. This post helps you to understand the various components and ......
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, September 9, 2009 9:38 AM | Comments (2)

Handling DataGrid.SelectedItems in an MVVM-friendly manner

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 collection ......
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, May 19, 2010 7:17 AM | Comments (31)

Crowdsourcing MVVM Light Toolkit support

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 happy. Due ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, April 18, 2010 9:45 AM | Comments (0)

Small change in MVVM Light Toolkit templates for Blend 4 RC

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]\Documen... ......
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, April 18, 2010 2:15 AM | Comments (0)

Sample code for my #mix10 talk online

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.Windows.Interactivity ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, March 16, 2010 10:19 AM | Comments (59)

What’s new in MVVM Light V3

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 Presentation Foundation 4 RC Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 RC For more ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, March 16, 2010 4:42 AM | Comments (21)

Using commands with ApplicationBarMenuItem and ApplicationBarButton in Windows Phone 7

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:PhoneAp... <shell:ApplicationBar x:Name="MainPageApplication... <shell:ApplicationBar.Me... <shell:ApplicationBarMen... Text="Add City" /> <shell:ApplicationBarMen... ......
Print | posted on Posted On Friday, April 9, 2010 10:40 AM | Comments (18)

MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 for Windows Phone 7

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 through ......
Print | posted on Posted On Saturday, April 3, 2010 7:59 PM | Comments (6)

Sample code and slides for my TechDays10 (Belgium) talks

The source code for my MVVM talk titled “Understanding the MVVM Pattern” given at TechDays 2010 in Antwerpen, Belgium, is available online. It is actually the same code than the MIX10 one, but I added the Windows Phone 7 MVVM Light application (available in the folder titled “Mix10.MvvmDemo2-End”. Note: before unpacking the zip file, you should right click on it, and select properties / Unblock. I also published the slides for my two talks: Understanding the MVVM Pattern A day in the life of a WPF/SL ......
Print | posted on Posted On Friday, April 2, 2010 11:28 AM | Comments (0)

MVVM Light V3 released at #MIX10

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 V3. I prepared ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, March 16, 2010 4:40 AM | Comments (4)

My program at #MIX10

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: Understanding the ......
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, March 10, 2010 6:01 AM | Comments (1)

Schedule for my session at MIX10

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-conference), ......
Print | posted on Posted On Thursday, March 4, 2010 7:48 PM | Comments (1)

The MVVM landscape at MIX10

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. Since my ......
Print | posted on Posted On Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:06 AM | Comments (2)

Talking in Las Vegas: MIX2010 and MVVM

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. Understanding the ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, January 19, 2010 12:28 AM | Comments (12)

MIX 2010: Voting for sessions has begun (I got two)

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 is fierce: ......
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, January 5, 2010 12:12 PM | Comments (0)

Silverlight 4: Drag&drop with EventToCommand

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 ......
Print | posted on Posted On Thursday, December 17, 2009 4:49 AM | Comments (10)

MVVM Light V3/alpha3 for Blend 3 and Blend Preview 4

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 Codeplex. ......
Print | posted on Posted On Friday, December 4, 2009 9:06 PM | Comments (6)

MVVM Light Toolkit V3 Alpha 3 for WPF4/SL4

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 page describing ......
Print | posted on Posted On Monday, November 30, 2009 10:56 AM | Comments (17)

Bug correction in Messenger and new feature in EventToCommand (MVVM Light Toolkit V3 alpha)

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 of the Messenger. ......
Print | posted on Posted On Friday, November 13, 2009 11:55 AM | Comments (9)

MVVM Light Toolkit Logo by P. Schutz

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 that ......
Print | posted on Posted On Saturday, November 7, 2009 10:03 AM | Comments (7)

MVVM Light Toolkit V3 Alpha 2: EventToCommand behavior

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 described ......
Print | posted on Posted On Thursday, November 5, 2009 2:57 AM | Comments (42)

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