Currently my focus lies on 2 newer technologies from Microsoft: WPF/Silverlight on the one hand and ASP.NET MVC. So, I was very pleased to see Microsoft finally released ASP.NET MVC. Since I've been playing with MVC a lot lately, this is another reason for my recent lack of posts.

If you want to get started with MVC, there is this great free E-book, actually a massice tutorial in which you make a NerdDinner application. Pretty Swanky!

Pfff... I'm so sorry about the lack of updates. I had a sudden blitz-project here at work. It had to be done yesterday for three weeks in a row. We went live yesterday and apart from some small glitches (which I'm ironing out now) it seems like we did a good job in the end.

So, no WPF for me during the past weeks, only ASP.NET and massive stress. I always figured I was pretty well guarded against it, but last week I found myself pounding away at the keyboard frantically while my heartrate went up through the roof. NOT a pleasent experience, I might add.

Nevertheless, I'll try to get my schedule back in order an alot some of my time to posting regularly again.

First of all: Rudi Grobler has a post about flexible layout and points us all again at one of his favorite WPF applications PhotoSuru. This is a pretty amazing looking WPF application (which I haven't been able to run yet due to time pressure).

Craig Shoemaker posted two awesome webcasts on MVVM in both Silverlight and WPF with some help:

(Craig Shoemaker) decided to create some long-form screencasts that will help teach the concepts of MVVM. I contacted Microsoft Program Manager Tim Heuer to tackle the Silverlight project and WPF Super Ninja Josh Smith to lead the way for a WPF implementation.

As to why he did this, he explains:

With the emergence of WPF, the change in architecture brought about a need to shift the approach of separation of concerns in the presentation layer. The approach of Model-View-Controller and it’s offspring were an obvious choice, but the existing models were required no small amount of shoe-horning to make a comfortable match for XAML applications.

Even though WPF developers have it easy, that doesn't mean you can't produce fancy UI's with WinForms:

XCoolForm is a library which allows you to paint fancy titlebars, borders, titlebar buttons, status bars, etc. It comes with a few pre-built styles, and you can easily make your own styles

In this extensive article Nedim Sabic explains everything you need to know to start using XCoolForm as well as the how and the why of the implementation.


So, if you're stuck in WinForms but still need eye-candy, check out XCoolForm.

Yesterday, on my birthday, Rob Eisenberg and Christopher Bennage release the offical Beta version of Caliburn.

Designed to aid in the development of WPF and Silverlight applications, Caliburn implements a variety of UI patterns for solving real-world problems. Patterns that are enabled by the framework include MVC, MVP, Presentation Model (MVVM), Commands and Application Controller.

Calibrun is an attempt to simplify developing high-quality UIs in WPF and Silverlight by incorporating pretty much every known WPF-related design pattern and best practice :) In that respect, the project resembles Prism. All in all, I must say, it looks promising, and once I finish the DIY on my attic, I'll certainly take a look at it!