Essential XAML

Blendability Part IV – Design Time Support for MEF by Tomer Shamam

In my previous post I've discussed the usage of MEF with the famous MVVM pattern, and demonstrated the usage of my Import markup-extension, and how it can replace the View Model Locator with an elegant syntax. In this post I would like to reveal and discuss the implementation of the Import markup-extension. Let's begin with a short story. Say that you're building an application for controlling a robot. The robot lives happily in a 2D surface, and can be move freely in between the surface's...

Blendability Part III – View Model Locator Replacement using MEF by Tomer Shamam

Everybody loves MEF! Don't you? I think MEF is one of the best things happened to the latest .NET Framework 4. Just in case that you don't know what I'm talking about, I urge you to start reading about MEF in my colleague, Bnaya Eshet, blog . He has great MEF tutorial for beginners. So why am I writing about MEF in this WPF related post anyway? Well MEF is a great framework for extensibility and object composition, also it can be used as a DI container, declaratively and imperatively...

Blendability Part II – Design time support for Prism by Tomer Shamam

In my previous post I’ve presented the Blendability concept and explained how to leverage Blend’s sample-data generation in order to support view-model at design time. In this post I would like to continue with this concept and reveal a tiny research I’ve done related to design time support of Prism modules. If you’ve ever developed a WPF Composite Application using Prism you may be aware of a frustrating problem while trying to work with the Shell at design time. It always ends with something like...

Blendability Part I – Design time ViewModel by Tomer Shamam

In case that you haven't added the word ‘Blendability' to your XAML Jargon yet, I’m sure this post will inspire you doing so. The Blend-ability term describes how a piece of data model or view model is viewable or designable at design time, whether by Expression Blend or Visual Studio Designer. Building a Silverlight or WPF applications, everybody loves using the MVVM pattern. This pattern greatly decouples the view from its logic and domain model, hence enabling relatively easy unit testing...

Microsoft Open House Summary - WPF 4 and Blend 4 by Tomer Shamam

To all of you who participated in my WPF 4 and Blend 4 lecture at Microsoft Raanana today, it was my pleasure. I hope that you enjoyed and learned one or two things new about WPF.   You can download the presentation and demo code from here . Hope to see you soon.

Microsoft Open House - WPF 4 and Blend 4 by Tomer Shamam

  Next week, 14/11/2010 I’m having a session about Building Rich Client Applications with WPF 4 and Expression Blend 4 at Microsoft Israel, Raanana, and I’m going to present new features in WPF 4 such as the new Ribbon control and talk about how to develop WPF UI applications which work on Blend 4.   Feel free to register , it’s free. Hope to see you there.

Open Project in Blend from Visual Studio 2010 - BlendIt! by Tomer Shamam

About one year ago, I wrote a little Visual Studio 2008 Addin called Blend It! for opening the active solution with Blend. Sadly, this Addin stopped working under Visual Studio 2010. Today someone sent me an email, and asked if I can migrate this addin to work with VS2010. So I did and I’m glad to share it with my dear blog readers. :) Feel free to download Blend It! for Visual Studio 2010 from here . After downloading, just install it and restart Visual Studio 2010. Now you can open WPF project...

WPF 4 Session by Tomer Shamam

Thank you for participating my WPF 4 and Blend 3 session at Microsoft, Ranana, Jan-21. You can download the presentation and demo files from SkyDrive .

Blend Behaviors via Attached Properties – Part 3 by Tomer Shamam

Recall my previous post, I’ve talked about how to implement custom Actions. In this post I would like to explain how to implement custom Triggers. As you may already know, trigger is the cause and action is the effect of that cause. The question is, why would you like to implement a custom trigger? So lets start with a little example: Blend 3 comes with only event triggers. But what if you want to invoke an action when property changes? For that reason you would like to implement a custom trigger...

Blend Behaviors via Attached Properties – Part 2 by Tomer Shamam

In my previous post I’ve talked about Blend 3 attached behaviors, and explained how to use them. In this post I would like to dive into more details, explaining the differences between Triggers, Actions and Behaviors types and how to create custom triggers. Triggers and Actions Actually blend 3 attached behavior comes in two flavors: Triggers and Actions Behaviors You can think of triggers and actions as cause-and-effect relationships. Trigger represents the cause. For example we want to do something...

Blend Behaviors via Attached Properties – Part 1 by Tomer Shamam

Up until Blend 3, UI designers had difficult time prototyping a real functional UI. The main problem was the lack of behaviors. Creating a UI prototype that deals with navigation, window creation on event, animation on data changes etc, usually ends up with source code development. And when it comes to coding, UI designers had to have kind of developer colleague. XAML Tools Over time, developers (like me :) created many XAML extensions using both XAML Markup Extensions and the powerful Attached Property...

<howto>Know that you're in design time mode</howto> by Tomer Shamam

When you write markup extensions, or any other control that may work differently at runtime then design time, you may want to check if you’re in design time to pick the correct logic. In WPF, you can call the DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode   attached property. In Silverlight, you may use the HtmlPage.IsEnabled property. This will work from both Blend and Cider designers. Example: if ( DesignerProperties .GetIsInDesignMode(textBox) {    return "In Design Time Mode" ;...

Blend It! - Visual Studio 2008 Add-In by Tomer Shamam

Hi Guys! Now that Blend 3.0 is out I supposed that you wish to have an option to open a WPF solution directly from Visual Studio, without opening the solution folder and right-click on it to open with blend. This is why I’ve created the Blend It! Visual Studio Add-In. You can download it from here . In case that you’ve already installed it, all you have to do is to install it again and restart visual studio. From now on it will open your WPF solutions with Blend 3.0. Enjoy.

Open VS Solution With Blend by Tomer Shamam

To all my students, conferences and lectures attendees, I’m glad to share with you my “Blend it!” Visual Studio 2008 Add-in. * Blend It! is a humble Visual Studio 2008 Add-in, loads into the solution menu and provides an option to open current solution with Microsoft Expression Blend 1.0, 2.0 or 2.5 CTP (and maybe future versions if Microsoft will not change the blend installation path registry key, and Blend.exe file name – although you can always change the Add-in configuration file manually :...

The Future of WPF - PDC08 by Tomer Shamam

Although Silverlight 2.0 is biting WPF in its tail, and Microsoft promotes Silverlight 2.0 for future LOB applications, and that Silverlight is planned to go out-of-prison (browser), there is a nice plan for WPF 4.0. I'll start by saying that few controls such as the long awaiting DataGrid , Calendar and DatePicker controls are now released, and you can download the toolkit from here . There is a new cool WPF Ribbon control which is currently CTP, and you can also download it from here . * In...