JohnPapa.net

Silverlight TV 13: MVVM Light Toolkit

John Papa — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:28:00 GMT

The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9! In this episode, Silverlight MVP Laurent Bugnion of IdentityMine appears on the show to discuss using MVVM with Silverlight. Laurent and John discuss their experiences with MVVM and how Laurent's experiences inspired him to create his MVVM Light Toolkit. If you have been meaning to get into MVVM or you feel a bit overwhelmed by it all, definitely watch this episode and check out the MVVM Light Toolkit.

Links for this episode:

You can see the episode online by clicking this link or clicking the mage below:

Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for the latest updates.

Silverlight TV is once again unscripted and shot in 1 take. Don’t miss this one!

Key links for Silverlight TV
	Watch Silverlight TV Shows on Channel 9 Watch shows and catch the latest news in our Silverlight TV blog
	Subscribe to the RSS feed for the show itself Subscribe to the show on your Zune Subscribe to the show for your iPod
	Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for updates, alerts for new shows, and to submit comments and feedback.

If you have not watched the previous episodes of Silverlight TV, you can catch them here.

Got Questions? Ask the Experts at MIX10

John Papa — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:42:00 GMT

On Monday the 15th from 5pm – 6:30pm at MIX10 there will be a “Ask the Experts” event where an incredible pool of knowledgeable experts on topics including Silverlight, WCF RIA Services, and Blend will be available to answer your questions. You can also win some great prizes including a Zune HD! I’ll be there along with Adam Kinney, Brad Abrams, Joe Stegman, and many others. More details are below, but please stop by and see us!

“Ask the Experts” returns to MIX on Monday, March 15.

5:00 – 6:30pm; Monday, March 15

Location: Shorelines A (Meal Hall)

You supply the conversation, we supply the beer! MIX speakers, Microsoft team members and members of the web community will be available to answer your questions and take your feedback at this informal reception. You’ll find experts in all content areas covered at MIX10, including: Web Standards, Windows Azure, Windows Phone, RIA, Framework & Tools, Cloud Services and the MIX Community.

If the food, drink and technology experts weren’t enough… we’re holding an old-fashioned drawing for two 16GB Zune HDs! You must be present to win.

Now Every Thursday Morning - Silverlight TV

John Papa — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 06:23:00 GMT

It has been 7 weeks since Silverlight TV kicked off its first episode with Keith Smith. Since then we have posted a total of 12 shows on a variety of topics. Here are some interesting numbers from the show:

12 The number of episodes we have aired in since the debut.
145 The number of comments our viewers have left on Channel 9
703 How many followers @SilverlightTv has on Twitter
333,000 + The number of views Silverlight TV has had in 7 weeks! Thank you so much for watching!

Along the way we learned a few things, gotten some great feedback, and we will be making a few minor changes over the next few weeks. Some things we have learned:

There is no end of Silverlight topics to explore! Keep the requests coming.
15 minutes seems to be the sweet spot
A regular schedule and cadence is helpful
Adam Kinney likes to watch Silverlight TV every night at 10pm
We really need a blooper reel. (That’s all I am saying on this one)
We need shorter guests with less hair

OK, so maybe we don’t need shorter guests with less hair. But even so, maybe I can get Charlie Kindel to come on the show or Keith Smith to make a return visit. They have the right haircut to fit in. :-)

Now Every Thursday Morning you can count on a new episode. Starting this week we’ll be posting a new episode of Silverlight TV every Thursday morning. So you can be sure each week to catch the next episode every Thursday morning. We’ll still add bonus shows occasionally for special occasions like PDC or MIX, but having a regular cadence will allow our viewers to count on us every Thursday morning.

Get Your MVVM Fix with Silverlight MVP, Laurent Bugnion this Thursday. Laurent will be discussing his expertise in MVVM and show his MVVM Light Toolkit. I’m really excited about this interview as MVVM is something I am also passionate about.

Get Your Free SWAG! Don’t forget to show your love for Silverlight TV and get one of the laptop stickers or T-shirts that we’ll be handing out while supplies last at MIX. Keep following us on Twitter @SilverlightTV to get clues on when and where to get the Silverlight TV swag!

Please keep the feedback coming and keep tuning in to watch Silverlight TV, every Thursday morning.

Silverlight TV 12: The Best Blend 3 Video Ever!

John Papa — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:06:00 GMT

The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9! In this episode, Adam Kinney makes his theatrical return to Silverlight TV and claims to have filmed the best Expression Blend 3 video ever! (or at least on Silverlight TV). Adam walks through Blend and Sketchflow from the perspective of the client and through to the designer/developer using a real world scenario. This is a great demonstration of how to effectively use Blend. In this video, Adam demonstrates :

sketching with SketchFlow
importing images
path conversion to elements
sample data
editing item templates
data binding
behaviors
effects
visual states
easing

This is a great and very practical demonstration of Blend 3 from the Expression Evangelist, himself.

Links for this episode:

http://adamkinney.com/ – Adam’s blog covering Silverlight and Expression Blend
http://projectrosetta.com/ – includes tutorials covering a lot of the exact material we went through in the video
http://expressionblend.codeplex.com/ – the Behaviors sample pack we talked a lot about

You can see the episode online by clicking this link or clicking the mage below:

Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for the latest updates.

Silverlight TV is once again unscripted and shot in 1 take. Don’t miss this one!

Key links for Silverlight TV
	Watch Silverlight TV Shows on Channel 9 Watch shows and catch the latest news in our Silverlight TV blog
	Subscribe to the RSS feed for the show itself Subscribe to the show on your Zune Subscribe to the show for your iPod
	Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for updates, alerts for new shows, and to submit comments and feedback.

If you have not watched the previous episodes of Silverlight TV, you can catch them here.

Silverlight TV 11: Dynamically Loading XAPs with MEF

John Papa — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:30:00 GMT

The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 11! In episode 11 Glenn Block makes a return appearance on Silverlight TV and discusses the one of my favorite features of MEF: partitioning. Glenn explains how partitioning makes it easy to decouple the application and dynamically load XAPs. This is incredibly useful when building large scale applications that experience XAP growth.

You can see the episode online by clicking this link or clicking the mage below:

Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for the latest updates.

Silverlight TV is once again unscripted and shot in 1 take. Don’t miss this one!

Key links for Silverlight TV
	Watch Silverlight TV Shows on Channel 9 Watch shows and catch the latest news in our Silverlight TV blog
	Subscribe to the RSS feed for the show itself Subscribe to the show on your Zune Subscribe to the show for your iPod
	Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for updates, alerts for new shows, and to submit comments and feedback.

If you have not watched the previous episodes of Silverlight TV, you can catch them here.

Silverlight TV 10: Silverlight Hyper Video Platform with Jesse Liberty

John Papa — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:53:00 GMT

The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 10! In episode 10 Jesse Liberty makes his first appearance on Silverlight TV and discusses the Silverlight Hyper Video Platform (SLHVP). Jesse is a brilliant person and a great guy to have on the show. Despite John’s attempts to make Jesse laugh, Jesse manages to shares just exactly what the SLHVP is, why it was created, and how it works. He has done a fantastic job stimulating the SLHVP with the community.

You can see the episode online by clicking this link or clicking the mage below:

Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for the latest updates.

Silverlight TV is once again unscripted and shot in 1 take. Don’t miss this one!

Key links for Silverlight TV
	Watch Silverlight TV Shows on Channel 9 Watch shows and catch the latest news in our Silverlight TV blog
	Subscribe to the RSS feed for the show itself Subscribe to the show on your Zune Subscribe to the show for your iPod
	Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for updates, alerts for new shows, and to submit comments and feedback.

If you have not watched the previous episodes of Silverlight TV, you can catch them here.

5 Simple Steps to Commanding in Silverlight

John Papa — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:53:00 GMT

Implementing ICommand in your Silverlight 4 project only requires a few steps. I have had a dozens of questions about this lately so I decided to share a very simple technique to implement commanding in Silverlight 4.

Step 1 – Implement ICommand

The first step is to implement the ICommand interface with a class that will manage the commanding aspects. There are other options to do this, but here is a simplified yet powerful implementation of ICommand.

The DelegatedCommand class implements ICommand’s CanExecute method, the Execute method, and the CaneExecuteChanged event. This code can be copied and used “as is”.

        1: public class DelegateCommand : ICommand

       2: {

       3:     Func<object, bool> canExecute;

       4:     Action<object> executeAction;

       5:     bool canExecuteCache;

       6:  

       7:     public DelegateCommand(Action<object> executeAction, Func<object, bool> canExecute)

       8:     {

       9:         this.executeAction = executeAction;

        this.canExecute = canExecute;

    }

  

    #region ICommand Members

  

    public bool CanExecute(object parameter)

    {

        bool temp = canExecute(parameter);

  

        if (canExecuteCache != temp)

        {

            canExecuteCache = temp;

            if (CanExecuteChanged != null)

            {

                CanExecuteChanged(this, new EventArgs());

            }

        }

  

        return canExecuteCache;

    }

  

    public event EventHandler CanExecuteChanged;

  

    public void Execute(object parameter)

    {

        executeAction(parameter);

    }

  

    #endregion

}

Step 2 – Define the Command

Add a public property to your ViewModel to represent the ICommand. This property will be bound to your View through a button, generally.

    public ICommand LoadProductsCommand { get; set; }

Step 3 – Create the Command

In the constructor of your ViewModel, set the command property you created in step 1.

    LoadProductsCommand = new DelegateCommand(LoadProducts, CanLoadProducts);

Step 4 – Create the VM

You must then make sure your ViewModel is accessible in your View. This is can be done in many ways. But for simplicity I am showing the ViewModel created as a static resource in the View’s XAML.

    <UserControl.Resources>

        <local:ProductViewModel x:Key="vm"/>

    </UserControl.Resources>

Step 5 – Bind the Command

Add a button control and bind the Command property to the command you created in the ViewModel. Then if you need to pass a parameter into the command you can bind the CommandParameter property to an element in the View. I find that I generally do not need to pass a parameter in, but I added this here as an example.

    <Button Content="Load" Width="120"

        Command="{Binding LoadProductsCommand}"

        CommandParameter="{Binding ElementName=FilterTextBox, Path=Text}" />

That’s it! 5 simple steps and now you have commanding in your application.

Want More …

I included the key code files in the post, below. No need to dive into them unless you want to grab the code as a starting point.

The complete ProductViewModel code can be seen here:

       1: public class ProductViewModel : ViewModelBase

       2: {

       3:     public ProductViewModel()

       4:     {

       5:         this.Products = new ObservableCollection<Product>();

       6:  

       7:         // Warning: DEMO CODE AHEAD

       8:         // Your ViewModel should not define your data for your Model :-)

       9:         // Instead, it could make a call to a service to get the data for the Model.

        this.AllProducts = new ObservableCollection<Product>();

        this.AllProducts.Add(new Product { ProductId = 1, ProductName = "Apple" });

        this.AllProducts.Add(new Product { ProductId = 2, ProductName = "Orange" });

        this.AllProducts.Add(new Product { ProductId = 3, ProductName = "Banana" });

        this.AllProducts.Add(new Product { ProductId = 4, ProductName = "Pear" });

        this.AllProducts.Add(new Product { ProductId = 5, ProductName = "Grape" });

        this.AllProducts.Add(new Product { ProductId = 6, ProductName = "Grapefruit" });

        this.AllProducts.Add(new Product { ProductId = 7, ProductName = "Strawberry" });

        this.AllProducts.Add(new Product { ProductId = 8, ProductName = "Melon" });

        this.AllProducts.Add(new Product { ProductId = 9, ProductName = "Guava" });

        this.AllProducts.Add(new Product { ProductId = 10, ProductName = "Kiwi" });

        this.AllProducts.Add(new Product { ProductId = 11, ProductName = "Pineapple" });

        this.AllProducts.Add(new Product { ProductId = 12, ProductName = "Mango" });

  

        LoadProductsCommand = new DelegateCommand(LoadProducts, CanLoadProducts);

    }

  

    private void LoadProducts(object param)

    {

        string filter = param as string ?? string.Empty;

        this.Products.Clear();

        var query = from p in this.AllProducts

                    where p.ProductName.ToLower().StartsWith(filter.ToLower())

                    select p;

        foreach (var item in query)

        {

            this.Products.Add(item);

        }

    }

  

    private bool CanLoadProducts(object param)

    {

        return true;

    }

  

    public ICommand LoadProductsCommand { get; set; }

  

    public ObservableCollection<Product> AllProducts { get; set; }

  

    private ObservableCollection<Product> products;

    public ObservableCollection<Product> Products

    {

        get

        {

            return products;

        }

        set

        {

            products = value;

            this.FirePropertyChanged("Product");

        }

    }

}



Here is the ViewModelBase class. It simply contains the FirePropertyChanged event that all ViewModel classes will use in my project.

       1: public abstract class ViewModelBase : INotifyPropertyChanged

       2: {

       3:     public ViewModelBase()

       4:     {

       5:     }

       6:  

       7:     public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;

       8:  

       9:     protected void FirePropertyChanged(string propertyname)

      10:     {

      11:         var handler = PropertyChanged;

      12:         if (handler != null)

      13:             handler(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyname));

      14:     }

      15:  

      16: }

MIX 10K Challenge Winners

John Papa — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:05:00 GMT

The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9! In episode 9 John thwarts Adam’s futile attempt to take over Silverlight TV. No … actually John and Adam have way too much fun as the Continuum Show meets Silverlight TV as John and Adam review the highlights of the MIX 10K Challenge. They check out the winners in each category of the second annual contest, which has some great prizes. The MIX 10K Challenge Winners have been announced publicly, and are now posted on the MIX 10K Challenge home page.

You can see the episode online by clicking this link or clicking the mage below:

Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for the latest updates.

Silverlight TV is once again unscripted and shot in 1 take. Don’t miss this one!

Key links for Silverlight TV
	Watch Silverlight TV Shows on Channel 9 Watch shows and catch the latest news in our Silverlight TV blog
	Subscribe to the RSS feed for the show itself Subscribe to the show on your Zune Subscribe to the show for your iPod
	Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for updates, alerts for new shows, and to submit comments and feedback.

If you have not watched the previous episodes of Silverlight TV, you can catch them here.

Prepping for Silverlight Bootcamp at MIX10

John Papa — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:54:00 GMT

In just under a month MIX10 will kick off with a day of workshops. One of these workshops is a Silverlight Bootcamp that both I and Mike Taulty will be presenting at. Mike is a fantastic presenter and has some great content on Silverlight. I can’t wait to share the podium with him!

If you have yet to register for MIX or for our workshop, you can sign up here. The workshop is filling fast … perhaps because I’ll be giving away some cool new Silverlight TV t-shirts at the bootcamp. ;-)

Mike and I hope to see you there!

SL TV 8: Silverlight Client for Facebook

John Papa — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:46:00 GMT

The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9! In episode 8 John scores a cool interview with one of the developers responsible for the Silverlight client for Facebook application. This application made a big splash at the PDC 09 keynote, and another when it was released on www.silverlight.net at this link here. Rajendra Vishnumurty demonstrates some of the key features of the application and jumps right into the code for several areas. Be sure not to miss this inside look at the Silverlight client for Facebook.

You can see the episode online by clicking this link or clicking the mage below:

Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for the latest updates.

Microsoft Silverlight Client for Facebook

This application brings together the many compelling platform capabilities of Silverlight 4 into a rich out-of-browser application in the familiar context of Facebook. Enjoy the photos, feeds, events, friends’ walls, and inbox mail from your Facebook account in a visually stunning and user-friendly environment.

Key Features Demonstrated:

Out-of-browser support
Hosting HTML content interactively
Local Device access (webcam)
Rich-Text control
Embedding alternative media content (i.e., YouTube)
Desktop notifications
COM integration (with Outlook) on the Windows platform
Right-click
Drag-n-drop
Window control
Animations

Silverlight TV is once again unscripted and shot in 1 take. Don’t miss this one!

Key links for Silverlight TV
	Watch Silverlight TV Shows on Channel 9 Watch shows and catch the latest news in our Silverlight TV blog
	Subscribe to the RSS feed for the show itself Subscribe to the show on your Zune Subscribe to the show for your iPod
	Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for updates, alerts for new shows, and to submit comments and feedback.

If you have not watched the previous episodes of Silverlight TV, you can catch them here.