April 2012 Entries

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 ...

Metro design inspiration

[This is the English version of an article I wrote for the Netzwoche publication in Switzerland. This is part 2 of a 3-parts article about Metro. The original article in German can be found online on the Netzwoche website.] With Windows 8, Microsoft is going to potentially install their new design language called Metro on a massive amount of computers of all shapes, from thin low-powered slates to full scale PCs. However Metro was not born overnight and in fact a lot of research was put into it. ...

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, ...

#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 ...

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

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 ...

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, ...

How to work around a possible XNA Game Studio or Windows Phone SDK install failure on Windows 8

I am not sure if you guys know Aaron Stebner. Aaron works at Microsoft, and has pulled thorns from my side many many times already. His blog is at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ast... and it is a gold mine of tips and tricks to debug and solve many cryptic issues happening during installation and removal of programs. For example, Aaron taught me how to remove programs that do not appear in the Programs and Features list, amongst many other things. The last nugget I used from Aaron’s blog saved my butt ...

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... ...