Vincent Leung .NET Tech Clips

The latest tech clips from the .NET community

MEF vs Prism

There is some obvious overlap but also a clear delineation. In particular when it comes to UI composition. MEF can be used for UI composition for sure, however it doesn’t have specific UI composition bits like RegionManager, Composite Commands, EventAggregator.

In general though here are the differences.

  • First, MEF is in the platform as part of SL4/FX4.
  • Second, MEF is a general UI agnostic composition technology while Prism is specific for UI composition. MEF also extends beyond composite applications to general extensibility / plugin models.
  • Third, Prism and MEF can work together.

There are two primary use cases i hear about for MEF and Prism working together.

  1. Use Prism with MEF as an add-on for extensibility. That is make modules extensible through MEF.  You can think of this as the “Two worlds in harmony” solution. Your core architecture rests on Prism’s modularity / and an IoC Container and sits side by side with MEF.
  2. Use MEF primarily for modularity, and pull in Prism bits for UI composition.  In this model, your core architecutre sits on top of MEF, with MEF replacing the services of your IoC.

Via MEF and Prism, to be or not to be. – Glenn Block – CodeBetter.Com – Stuff you need to Code Better!

December 4, 2009 Posted by Vincent Leung | Silverlight | | No Comments Yet

Sharing Silverlight Assemblies with .NET Apps – Kind of

For SL 4 and .NET 4, the following assemblies are portable at the Siverlight surface area:

  • Mscorlib
  • System
  • System.Core
  • System.ComponentModel.Composition
  • Microsoft.VisualBasic

There are a great number of types and members in the .NET surface area that cannot run on Silverlight. As a result, you need to write code that targets the Silverlight versions of these assemblies in order to get this scenario to work.

Developers should write their portable logic in Silverlight Class Library projects, and then are free to reference such projects from both Silverlight and .NET application projects. To clarify, on the .NET side, you can reference such a library (Binary) from any kind of .NET project (Ex: WPF, winforms, WCF, WF, ASP.NET, …).

The following are the basic steps to follow to enable the use of portable code in Visual Studio 2010

Steps:

  1. Setup projects
    1. Create .NET application
    2. Create or add existing Silverlight class library project
    3. Build Silverlight project
  2. Establish portable code reference
    1. Reference Silverlight class library binary from the .NET project
  3. Code
  4. Run App!

CLR Team Blog : Sharing Silverlight Assemblies with .NET Apps

December 2, 2009 Posted by Vincent Leung | Silverlight | | No Comments Yet

Adding animation when items are added to the Silverlight Listbox

An enhancement has been made that allows you to add animation when items are added ,or removed from, the list box.  Silverlight 4 adds a new StateGroup to the ListBoxItem class:

ListBoxItemAttributes

fluidUIDemo

A Simple Demo

The user types into the text box, clicks the add button and the text “floats” up into the list.

So Where Is the Magic??

To take advantage of the new FluidUI all you need to do is to set the behavior you want on any or all of the three new Visual States in the LayoutStates group of the ListBoxItem class.

The easiest way to do this is to open the project in Blend and right click on the ListBox. Choose Edit Additional Templates –> Edit Generated Item Container –> Edit a Copy

Name the new template and then click on the ListItem and open the CreateStyleStates tab. For this simple demo, only modified the Loaded state.

To do so, click on the Loaded state and then expand the timeline. You’ll set new values for the entire Grid (which has 4 sub-elements).

select 0 seconds, and set the opacity to 0 and the  y coordinate of a translate-transform to 200.   Click save keyframe values, and then select 1 second and set the opacity to 1 and the y coordinate to 0. Save the new template…

Via Silverlight 4 Fluid UI – Jesse Liberty – Silverlight Geek

December 2, 2009 Posted by Vincent Leung | Silverlight | | No Comments Yet

Managed Extensibility Framework

blocks.png

Watch this first: 10mins Screencast

In Silverlight 4 – Glenn Block

Simple Kick Start Example using MEF (Preview 8)

  1. Creating the rule Interface : IRule
  2. Creating a rule instance
  3. Creating the holder for all your plug-ins
  4. Creating the logic to load the plugin
  5. Load Rules at runtime

Also from codeplex:

Learn more about MEF

Read the MEF Programming Guide

Read our sample documentation

Architecture Overview

Visit the MEF Discussions

See our team Blogs

See field and industry blogs on MEF

Read reference documentation on MSDN, (more)

Via http://mef.codeplex.com/

December 2, 2009 Posted by Vincent Leung | MEF, Silverlight | | No Comments Yet

Silverlight 4 Sessions for Business Developer

Essential

CL01 – SL4 Overview (Demo files) – Karen Corby

CL21 – Amazing Bus Apps with RIA Services (Demo files)– Brad Abrams

 

CL19 – Building LOB Apps (Demo files) – David Poll

CL20 – Trusted Apps Out of Browser (Demo files 1, 2) – Joe Stegman

Useful

CL07 – Mastering RIA Services – Dinesh Kulkarni

CL06 – Networking and Web Services in SL4 – Yavor Georgiev

FT24 – Extensible RIA with MEF – Glenn Block

CL22 – Building Large-Scale Apps with Silverlight – John Papa

December 1, 2009 Posted by Vincent Leung | Silverlight | | No Comments Yet

All about Behaviors

 

 

November 25, 2009 Posted by Vincent Leung | Expression Blend, Silverlight | | No Comments Yet

Expression Blend 3 Mini-Tutorial Screencasts

image

November 25, 2009 Posted by Vincent Leung | Expression Blend, Silverlight | | No Comments Yet

Silverlight 4 Rough Notes – Mike Taulty

Mike talks about all the new features found in Silverlight 4

November 20, 2009 Posted by Vincent Leung | Silverlight | | No Comments Yet

Getting Started with Silverlight 4 Beta

 image

System requirement: Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 Beta 2

Documentation

Samples

Also check out:

What’s new in Silverlight 4 Beta

***Silverlight 4 Beta – A guide to the new features – Tim Heuer ***

November 18, 2009 Posted by Vincent Leung | Silverlight | | 1 Comment

What’s new in Silverlight 4 Beta

image A few interesting new features

  • Enabling Business Application Development
    • The .NET Common Runtime (CLR) now enables the same compiled code to be run on the desktop and Silverlight without change.
    • Drag and drop support for databinding and automatically creating bound controls such as listbox,datagrid.
    • New datasources window and picker.
    • Easy to pick styles and resources to make a good looking application based on designer resources built in Expression Blend.
    • Printing
    • Print Preview
    • Rich Text Area Control
    • Text Input
    • WCF RIA Services
    • Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)
    • Viewbox Control
    • Auto-Sizing Columns and Copy from DataGrid
    • Navigation Page Loading Extensibility
    • Command Property on ButtonBase and Hyperlink
    • SelectedValue and SelectedValuePath on the Selector
    • Authentication Support with ClientHttpWebRequest
    • IDataErrorInfo
    • INotifyDataErrorInfo
    • Grouping on CollectionViewSource
    • Editable CollectionView IEditableCollectionView
    • Binding to String Indexers
    • StringFormat, TargetNullValue, FallbackValue
    • Databinding Support for Dependency Objects
    • ObservableCollection<T> Constructor Accepts IList and IEnumerable
  • Empowering Richer Experiences
    • Fluid UI States for ItemsControl
    • Word Based Text Trimming (trailing ellipses)
    • Implicit Styles
    • MouseWheel Support
    • Right Mouse Click
    • Programmatic Clipboard Access
    • Silverlight as a Drop Target
    • Webcam and Microphone Support
    • Audio and video “local” recording capabilities capture RAW video without requiring server interaction, enabling a wide range of end-user interaction and communication scenarios for example video conferencing.
    • CompositeTransform
    • Bring data in to your application with features such as copy and paste or drag and drop.
    • Multi-touch support enables a range of gestures and touch interactions to be integrated into user experiences.
  • Sandboxed Applications
    • WebBrowser Control
    • HtmlBrush
    • Notifications (Toast) – a popup window on the taskbar
    • Control over aspects of UI include window settings such as start position, size and chrome.
  • Trusted Applications
    • Native Integration, Windows API, COM Automation
    • File System Access
    • Cross-Domain Networking Access without security policy file
    • Full File Path on Open and Save Dialogs
    • Full Keyboard in Full Screen Mode

Via JohnPapa.net

Also check out

November 18, 2009 Posted by Vincent Leung | Silverlight | | 1 Comment

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