Windows Phone 7 MUST HAVE Toolkits

Another MUST HAVE post, but it’s well worth the read.

Finally out of the labs and into the wild.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/gg577609

http://thesociablegeek.com/2011/01/11/top-10-windows-phone-7-wp7-resources/

Great Post for Windows Phone 7 development.

Recently a colleague of mine pointed out to me that visibility properties should not really belong in your view models.

What’s the alternative?

Use bool properties in your VM and converter.

Firstly the converter.

 1 public class BoolToVisibilityConverter : IValueConverter
 2     {
 3 
 4         public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
 5         {
 6             if (value.GetType() == typeof(bool))
 7             {
 8                 if ((bool)value == true)
 9                 {
10                     return Visibility.Visible;
11                 }
12                 else 
13                 {
14                     return Visibility.Collapsed;
15                 }
16             }
17                 return null;
18         }
19 
20         public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)
21         {
22             throw new NotImplementedException();
23         }
24     }

Secondly, register the converter in your XAML

1 xmlns:converters="clr-namespace:myApp.Converters;assembly=myApp"
2 
3 <UserControl.Resources>
4     <converters:BoolToVisibilityConverter x:Key="BoolToVisibilityConverter"/>
5 </UserControl.Resources>
6 

And thirdly, use the converter in the binding statement

1 Visibility="{Binding CommandButtonsVisibility, Converter={StaticResource BoolToVisibilityConverter}}"

Link to blog posting(Fear and Loathing, the technical blog of Bil Simser)

Why use the DataStateBehaviour?

The DataStateBehaviour lets you change the look and feel of your XAML at runtime with the Visual States Manager in a very MVVM friendly way – best of both worlds.

Create a property (MenuIsVisible) in your view model and then you can bind the desired states in the xaml.

Binding="{Binding MenuIsVisible}" TrueState="ShowMenu" FalseState="None" Value="True"

Simple example code :

XAML

 1 <UserControl 
 2     x:Class="DataStateDemo.MainPage"
 3     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
 4     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
 5     xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
 6     xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
 7     mc:Ignorable="d"
 8     d:DesignHeight="100" d:DesignWidth="200"
 9     xmlns:i="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/2010/interactivity"     
10     xmlns:ei="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/2010/interactions"
11     >
12 
13     <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
14 
15         <VisualStateManager.CustomVisualStateManager>
16             <ei:ExtendedVisualStateManager/>
17         </VisualStateManager.CustomVisualStateManager>
18         
19         <i:Interaction.Behaviors>
20             <ei:DataStateBehavior Binding="{Binding MenuIsVisible}" TrueState="ShowMenu" FalseState="None" Value="True"/>
21         </i:Interaction.Behaviors>
22 
23         <VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups>
24             <VisualStateGroup x:Name="MenuStates">
25                 <VisualState x:Name="None"/>
26                 <VisualState x:Name="ShowMenu">
27                     <Storyboard>
28                         <ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.Visibility)" Storyboard.TargetName="gridMenu">
29                             <DiscreteObjectKeyFrame KeyTime="0">
30                                 <DiscreteObjectKeyFrame.Value>
31                                     <Visibility>Visible</Visibility>
32                                 </DiscreteObjectKeyFrame.Value>
33                             </DiscreteObjectKeyFrame>
34                         </ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames>                        
35                     </Storyboard>
36                 </VisualState>
37             </VisualStateGroup>
38         </VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups>
39 
40         <Button Command="{Binding ShowMenuCommand}" Height="20" Width="150" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Top">Show Menu</Button>
41 
42         <Grid x:Name="gridMenu" Visibility="Collapsed" Height="50" Width="150">
43             <StackPanel>
44                 <TextBlock>First Menu Item</TextBlock>
45                 <TextBlock>Second Menu Item</TextBlock>
46             </StackPanel>
47         </Grid>
48 
49     </Grid>
50 </UserControl>

Code Behind

 1 using System.Windows.Controls;
 2 
 3 namespace DataStateDemo
 4 {
 5     public partial class MainPage : UserControl
 6     {
 7         public MainPage()
 8         {
 9             InitializeComponent();
10             Loaded += (s, e) =>
11                           {
12                               DataContext = new MainPageViewModel();
13                           };
14         }
15     }
16 }

View Model

 1 using System;
 2 using System.Linq.Expressions;
 3 using System.Windows.Input;
 4 using GalaSoft.MvvmLight;
 5 using GalaSoft.MvvmLight.Command;
 6 
 7 namespace DataStateDemo
 8 {
 9     public class MainPageViewModel : ViewModelBase
10     {
11         public ICommand ShowMenuCommand { get; private set; }
12 
13         private bool menuIsVisible;
14 
15         public MainPageViewModel()
16         {
17             ShowMenuCommand = new RelayCommand(() => { MenuIsVisible = !MenuIsVisible; });
18         }
19 
20         public bool MenuIsVisible
21         {
22             get { return menuIsVisible; }
23             set
24             {
25                 menuIsVisible = value;
26                 RaisePropertyChanged(() => MenuIsVisible);
27             }
28         }
29 
30         #region INotifyPropertyChanged
31 
32         protected void RaisePropertyChanged<T>(Expression<Func<T>> propertyAccessor)
33         {
34             MemberExpression member = (MemberExpression)propertyAccessor.Body;
35             RaisePropertyChanged(member.Member.Name);
36         }
37 
38         #endregion
39     }
40 }

Programming Windows Phone 7

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2011.

If you have one of these fantastic Windows phones, there are 2 accessories you must get.

1) JVC HA-FXC50-B High Quality In-Ear Canal Headphones – Black

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001NS62PA/ref=oss_product

2) Griffin SmartTalk Headphone Adapter and Control Mic For iPhone and Mobile Phones

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001C0LBEG/ref=oss_product

The headphones give you a great sound and real bass plus the SmartTalk creates a long lead and the ability to change music tracks without having to pickup the phone, open plan office based developer heaven!

Thanks for @RobFe for both recommendations.

This one is a life saver, Shift-ALT-L to locate the current file in the Solution Explorer Tree.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=b3deb194-ca86-4fb6-a716-b67c2604a139&displaylang=en

Released 2nd of September 2010, this install removes the previous installation first.

Old one this but still good.

devenv.exe /nosplash

Faster start up for VS2010.

I’ve managed to wrestle control of my blog back from the hackers and spammers, I should be blogging again real soon!

Thanks for the support.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/07/19/vs-2010-productivity-power-tools-update-with-some-cool-new-features.aspx

Worth the time to look at.

Great little utility to get photo’s from Facebook into Outlook:

http://outsync.codeplex.com/

Outlook Social connector (with support for LinkedIn):

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c87e257c-d76f-4785-a09b-af36babd6e32&displaylang=en

Outlook Social Connector Provider for Facebook:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ce8b7517-234c-48a1-a655-324a88893b02&displaylang=en

In the editor Ctrl-I to change to incremental search mode.

The cursor changes to a pair of Binoculars with a green arrow and the status bar displays “Incremental Search”.

Start Typing and the first match is highlighted, Ctrl-I again to move to the next match, Ctrl-Shift-I to move back.

Escape to return to normal mode.

Copy “A” (Ctrl-C), copy “B” (Ctrl-C), copy “C” (Ctrl-C).

Ctrl-Shift-V once to paste “A”, twice to past “B” and three times to paste “C”!

Here is my take on the really useful bits in order.

- MEF

- ICommand Support

- Right Click Menus

- Text trimming / formatting, Null Values and Fallback Value.

- Out of Browser

- Printing API

- Dependency binding

- Microphone and Webcam support

There and many many more improvements, not least the re-write of the XAML parser, but these are the most useful to me in the field. I hope to in the next few days do a look at each one and produce a sample with each.

A little off topic this one, but if like me you love food this website is great.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/

Here is a brief summary review of the important points.

1) MVVM-C, Model-View-ViewModel-Controller.

To keep ViewModel light and small consider introducing a controller per VM that sits behind and performs all the service access and business logic. Why? To make the VM smaller and lighter and also perform service access in a background worker thread and marshal the results to the UI thread (VM) at the last possible moment.

This makes perfect sense to me and I have experienced VM bloat. Ray Booysen who gave the talk is a Silverlight programmer in the financial services sector and specialises in low latency systems.

2) Use the enableRedrawRegions and enableFrameRateCounter options.

By enabling these two options, it becomes very clear where you interface is redrawing during operation and avoiding the drop shadow effect is a must (this redraws the entire control and ever other control in the visual tree following).

3) Debugging and the SOS dll.

4) Unit Testing

The Silverlight Unit testing framework runs on the full .net stack (not the SL stack) and tests that pass in the unit tests may fail in SL.

http://edgeug.net/

Control + Tab bring up the VS2010 navigator, Control + Tab again to move forward through the items.

Control + Shift + Tab, move back through the items.

A bit of fun http://vs2010wallpapers.com/

Today I have published my first Silverlight behaviour to the expression blend gallery.

http://gallery.expression.microsoft.com/en-us/ShowHideWithFlip

Please vote for me!

Did you know VS2010 comes with a library of icons, png’s, and bitmaps?

Navigate to :

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\VS2010ImageLibrary\1033 (Win 64)

or

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\VS2010ImageLibrary\1033 (Win 32)

and find file VS2010ImageLibrary.zip.

Right click your project and select “Calculate Code Metrics”.

I’m looking for a good detailed explanation of exactly what the metrics are so if you have any good links please email them to me and I will re-post here.

One place to manage all the extensions in the VS2010 IDE.

Click the “online gallery” tab to see many more options to download.

To take advantage of the multi core’s in your servers and desktops .net 4 has many multi thread programming extensions.

“Parallel.ForEach” is one such extension, and the gottcha?

The loop is not always processed in the same order.

In this simple example the list of names comes out in a different order each time.

Named optional parameters with default values new in c# 4.0!

You can now “pin” a project in the Recent Projects list on the start page to keep your live work at the top. Hover over the area to the left of the project name and click to pin and un-pin.

You can dislocate panels from the VS2010 IDE and float them over to another monitor. Click and drag from the tab bar and you window is free!