.NET 4

All about .NET 4

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

#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 ......

#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. ......

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 ......

#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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

My Swiss TechDays presentations sample code

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 Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

With WPF and Silverlight against cancer

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

Microsoft Shape

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 this ......

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 ......

Silverlight 4 Unleashed table of content

(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 the new ......

Two small issues with Windows Phone 7 ApplicationBar buttons (and workaround)

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 Since the ......

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 ......

Be careful when installing the Blend Windows Phone 7 Add-In

There was a small issue today with the release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (April 2010 Refresh) refresh. The issue is that the Expression Blend Add-in Preview for Windows Phone (April Refresh) is not compatible with Blend 4.0.20408.0, which was the public RC (release candidate). A few days ago, the Blend team released a fix for an issue that was sometimes causing a crash when Blend was starting up. This new release (V4.0.20421.0) was not very well announced however, and many people (including ......

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 ......

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... ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

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 ......

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), ......

Silverlight MVP of the year

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 been ......

Quick tip: Commenting out properties in XAML

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 just ......

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 ......

Avoiding issues when typing text in Bindings

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 above. ......

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 ......

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: ......

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 ......

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. ......

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 ......