I've been looking into adopting MvvmCross in developing our next generation of software, mainly with the aim of developing tablet UIs for it. I understand that MvvmCross does not currently support WPF but I can see ourselves developing that and contributing it back.
However, I've also noticed that MvvmCross seems to be very light weight in that there is little support for composite UI as described in the Prism guide.
Unfortunately, we do need to allow for more complex composited UI scenarios.
Given what is stated in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10224376/mvvmcross-experiences-hindsight-limitations about forking or rolling your own with MvvmCross as a reference, and given that we do need more complex UI scenarios than those that MvvmCross provides, what would the best course of action be, fork and reimplement the parts of prism we need, try to get MvvmCross to work together with Prism as is, or develop our own from the inspiration of MvvmCross and MonoCross?
Update: See Second answer below...
I might need to write a longer answer to this tomorrow...
As an initial answer:
someone has already done a port of MvvmCross to Silverlight and the developers have suggested this might become available to the wider community
the PCL version of MvvmCross should be quite straight-forward to port to WPF - although possibly not if older .Net Runtime versions are required
as the chief dev of MvvmCross to date, I'm personally interested in supporting WPF - especially right now for my project http://github.com/slodge/BallControl which needs a desktop to run in (Windows Store is crippled - pah!)
composite UIs are supported in MvvmCross - e.g. tabs, pivots, panoramas, splits, modal children, etc - but there's not much work been done yet on a full composite UI like often seen in Prism.
I have seen people combine MvvmCross with other IoC frameworks, but (no work that I know of) has been done to date on combining MvvmCross with MEF (which is often used with Prism?)
If I were tackling this problem area, then I'd come at this:
Make sure we try to get a working app out first and foremost - the app matters more than the framework.
For framework, I'd try porting the basic IoC setup across first and some simple navigation
For the custom navigation (for displaying UIs in regions) I'd look at the role of the Presenter in MvvmCross - this is what I use in Tab examples, in iPad split view examples, etc to provide complex UI features.
If this custom navigation isn't enough I'd look at how it might be changed/replaced/extended - my guess is that the genuine requirements for WPF/Prism will actually be quite similar to the genuine requirements for bigger iPad, Surface and Nexus tablet apps.
I'd try to keep everything modular and optional so that small phone apps don't have to pull in big navigation processes that bigger apps might need. The downside of this might be lots of projects and DLLs!
I'd also be open to this splitting into separate project(s) - much of the modern software world is ruled by small targetted apps rather than bigger, sprawling frameworks.
Because I'm part time on Mvx, and this is your full time job, I'd definitely recommend you don't let Mvx hold you back!
My initial reaction is 'yes, I'd be really interested in working on this' - the downside (as above) is that I'm only spare time on mvx....
Here's the second answer...
I took the WinRT version of MvvmCross as a base (but also used elements of Console, WP7, Touch and Droid too)
I produced a simple WPF version of MvvmCross - https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross/tree/vnext/Cirrious/Cirrious.MvvmCross.Wpf
The main feature of this version is that it doesn't contain much in the way of navigation
e.g. don't try calling Back!
e.g. the main presenter is left abstract for the application UI to implement - see https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross/blob/vnext/Cirrious/Cirrious.MvvmCross.Wpf/Views/MvxWpfViewPresenter.cs
I then took the TwitterSearch demo app - https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross/tree/vnext/Sample%20-%20TwitterSearch/TwitterSearch.UI.Wpf
created some simple views (using cut and paste of Xaml from WP7 version)
created a simple Region based presenter - see how RegionAttribute is used in https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross/blob/vnext/Sample%20-%20TwitterSearch/TwitterSearch.UI.Wpf/MultiRegionPresenter.cs and in https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross/blob/vnext/Sample%20-%20TwitterSearch/TwitterSearch.UI.Wpf/MainWindow.xaml.cs
that was kind of it... give or take a couple of hours of debugging
There's a video of this in action - with some explanation at: http://youtu.be/pYkLxqpu_5E
This is obviously only a first step in Wpf support, but I suspect it is already going to satisfy quite a few use cases... Please feel free to fork the source tree and to extend or replace this first attempt. Also, if it doesn't work for you, then feel free to abandon it and try something else instead.
I will try to work on this more - but can't really prioritise it above paid work... but I am open to being paid to work on mvvmcross too :)
Related
I have done one full project using WPF, and have (at least) a pretty good grasp of the main concepts, like XAML, Databinding, and MVVM. We did everything "by hand"--we did not use an MVVM framework or third-party tools. All XAML was written by hand as well (no Blend).
The new project I will start in a few weeks is pretty heavy-duty Silverlight, and I'm looking to get up to speed as quickly as possible. However most of the articles I've read on getting started with SL focus on XAML and databinding. Since my introduction to these concepts is still very fresh in my memory, I can certainly understand why these tutorials would spend a lot of time on these subjects--the learning curve can be very steep. However these are concepts that I am already familiar with, and find myself having to wade through a lot of covered ground to learn anything new and compelling.
So what I'm looking for are advice on what I need to learn and understand to go from being a journeyman WPF'er to a journeyman Silverlight'er. This can be in the form of:
General Advice
Key Differences
Rules of Thumb
Resources/Links ("A WPFer's Guide to
Silverlight" would be perfect :)
Major Pitfalls/Things to Watch Out For
Thanks in advance for any insight.
Rob Eisenberg (creator of Caliburn and Caliburn Micro) has a series of blog posts that talks about porting a WPF application to Silverlight. This may give you some insight into some of the framework differences.
Day 1
http://devlicio.us/blogs/rob_eisenberg/archive/2010/03/25/porting-nhprof-from-wpf-to-silverlight-day-1.aspx
Day 2 http://devlicio.us/blogs/rob_eisenberg/archive/2010/03/29/porting-nhprof-from-wpf-to-silverlight-day-2.aspx
Day 3 http://devlicio.us/blogs/rob_eisenberg/archive/2010/03/31/porting-nhprof-from-wpf-to-silverlight-day-3.aspx
Day 4 http://devlicio.us/blogs/rob_eisenberg/archive/2010/04/01/porting-nhprof-from-wpf-to-silverlight-day-4.aspx
Day 5 http://devlicio.us/blogs/rob_eisenberg/archive/2010/04/02/porting-nhprof-from-wpf-to-silverlight-day-5.aspx
Day 6 http://devlicio.us/blogs/rob_eisenberg/archive/2010/04/02/porting-nhprof-from-wpf-to-silverlight-day-6.aspx
Day 7 http://devlicio.us/blogs/rob_eisenberg/archive/2010/04/02/porting-nhprof-from-wpf-to-silverlight-day-7.aspx
Day 8 http://devlicio.us/blogs/rob_eisenberg/archive/2010/04/02/porting-nhprof-from-wpf-to-silverlight-day-8.aspx
Some other thoughts off the top of my head:
Binding defaults to One-Way
No DynamicResource
TabControl is fairly different
No ability to define implicit DataTemplates for types
No CoerceValue in Dependency Properties
Event routing is very basic
No built-in command structure. You have the ICommand interface, and ButtonBase controls have a Command property, though there's no class that implements the ICommand interface.
Missing x:Static, x:Type
All service calls need to be on a different thread than the UI thread. This essentially requires you to learn / implement async programming strategies. See here and here.
As was mentioned, it's a different framework so not all libraries are available to you. Example: there is no XmlDocument - you have to use XElement (which is arguably better, though even so)
The Navigation framework is totally different than WPF. Stay away from it. It will only cause you pain. ;]
Several of the Controls that you find in the core framework in WPF you'll find in the Silverlight Toolkit. Download it, you'll need it.
No built-in Triggers, though can use behaviors / actions provided in the Blend SDK (which essentially gives you the same thing)
If you need to interact with a database, it will have to be through services hosted somewhere, or through COM (which means Silverlight 4 OOB with Elevated Permissions).
I disagree with Kevin in that testing is actually fairly easy and all of the major testing frameworks and mocking frameworks support Silverlight. Where you run into issues is Code Coverage. The Microsoft Testing framework supports Code Coverage (Premium & above) or else you can use dotCover. I believe newer versions of nCover supports Silverlight though I'm not 100% certain. Use StatLight to run your Silverlight tests (regardless of testing framework) from the command line.
If you're not already using an IoC container pick one up. Autofac, Ninject, StructureMap, Unity, MEF. (Another bias of mine ;])
I would highly suggest looking into the available MVVM frameworks. This has cut down a significant portion of the framework code I typically have to write. The frameworks will probably only get you 80% of what you need, though that's 80% you didn't have to write yourself. I'm currently partial to Caliburn Micro, though most of the popular ones will give you what you need.
I'll add more if I think of more. Good luck in your journey!
I've really only done Silverlight for a real app...but one of my co-workers was a big WPF guy, and so I hear some of his gripes.
You're going to probably need to use a WCF service, etc., for asynchronous queries to your service/business layer
You're using a subset of the .NET framework, so you cannot include ANY of your class libraries as a reference, only Silverlight class libraries can be included. However, you can do stuff like having a 'link to existing file' in a silverlight library that links to a file in other libraries...as long as the code still compiles with only the reduced set. This is a bit of a maintenance nightmare, but if you are doing WPF & Silverlight with some of the same code, it will probably save you from a lot of replication. Make sure to make it a link to the file and not a copy of the file, or changes in one won't change the other.
Unit testing your ViewModels will not be as easy. Need to Moq your service and use a Silverlight unit testing project.
Some of the reduced functionality is annoying for WPF veterans.
I think our WPF guy complained about not being able to bind stuff like a CanExecute method as easily on his commands as he was able to do in WPF. He had to call the method directly from the command or something. (I've only gotten a chance to look at MVVM a little so far as I'm now on a different project :(, so not quite sure on that one).
Hope that helps a little.
We're just starting up a new (our first) Silverlight project where we want to make a back office silverlight application using MVVM. Our application will need navigation through some kind of menu UI.
I've been poking around the web finding various frameworks (Galasoft MVVM Light Toolkit / Silverlight.FX / Prism) to help with building a MVVM application but i find it hard to single out which one suits our needs the best.
Does anyone have any experience/tips on which one to pick for a larger application with many Views and navigation between them.
Also, is a navigation Application the best way to get a "framed" application (with navigation inside the frame) or is there a better way?
I'll throw in a vote for Prism/Composite Application Guidance...mainly because I've used it in a number of "for work" projects.
The modularity stuff is great - you basically code up individual projects as if they were miniature applications in their own right, and you rely on the region management paradigm to composite your multiple "modules" into one cohesive app.
It does get a bit annoying as the module count gets high, although you don't have to make each module its own project...
Take a look at this article written by Jeremy Likness. He is using Prism and Navigation framework and its a good article to get you going with. Its also not hard to take the sample he provides and apply some MVVM principles to it.
I really appreciate the question (and answers) we already have in “List of WPF functionalities that aren’t in Silverlight 3.” My allegedly new question narrows down the differences between WPF and Silverlight into the context of MVVM. Based on a Shawn Wildermuth MVVM sample project I downloaded from MSDN, I do see that, as of Silverlight 2, “Element Binding isn’t supported yet…” But this surely is just one detail and is this still the case? Is there a summary of MVVM-centered differences between WPF and Silverlight? Can we build our apps to move with more ease between the two technologies?
Update: Silverlight requires that calls to external resources be asynchronous whereas in WPF it can be synchronous or asynchronous. This requirement in Silverlight is due to the Web-based nature of the technology.
The pattern is identical, but the implementation may differ. Silverlight is missing some crucial pieces such as commands that mean you may need to put a little more effort into achieving an MVVM solution. However, at the end of the day, you'll still end up with M's, V's, and VM's.
Element binding is now available in Silverlight 3, along with a couple different options for implementing actions. There are behaviors, which are pretty easy to code, as well as commands if you use a framework like Prism (from the Microsoft Patterns and Practices team, not included in Silverlight by default). There's also the Visual State Manager, which is in Silverlight only right now, that handles a lot of the routine kinds of animations you might want if what you're doing is state-based.
Building apps to move between the two technologies is a different matter though. There are a number of XAML elements that are not supported on Silverlight (and some SL stuff not in WPF) and the underlying runtime is specifically kept small to facilitate web deployment, so there are and will continue to be a number of things missing. I don't think we'll see completely cross platform applications (code once, compile into both WPF and Silverlight without changes) in the near future and I think that in anything but the most trivial of examples the code revisions are going to be significant.
This doesn't mean that you can't apply MVVM to both or that the skillsets don't apply across both. If you are familiar with one, you're certainly 80% of the way there on the other immediately (that 20% can be tough though!) and understanding the pattern (I use databinding to get synchronization code out of the view and into the view model, I use commands/triggers/behaviors to remove actions from event handlers in the code behind of the view, etc.) means that you know what to do, even if how you do it is going to be a little different. From that perspective, I think we're about as close as we're going to get to achieving parity at a pattern level.
As for a summary of the MVVM pattern implementation differences between Silverlight and WPF, I haven't found one. Sounds like a good topic for a blog post from someone though...
Couple of year ago I when to work for company as web developer. It has my first Sirius web development job, (ASPx/C#) so it has very exciting and I learned a lot about that world, from the developer point of view.
In that group we had a concept for the pages where loaded in the page UC’s (User controls), I don’t know if it’s the same in every web development team with every language, I’ll assume it is so.
The contract ended and I came back to develop win32 “winForm” application.
But since them I have tried to apply the same principle for my win32 development I learn there, meaning having bunch of UC’s (Visual User controls) that I load in the form.
They are regular visual components, not loaded in the toolbox, code is available in the project, but the component is not developed in the form, they are loaded there.
I would like to know opinions about this approach, what other are doing similar or better to this And improvements that can help us to speed up development and increase code reuse, because that is what this is all about.
If you're using the layout components in Winforms, this might be an acceptable approach although I think the thing that distinguishes the web and Windows Forms (note: NOT WPF!) is that in the former you do a lot of "compositing" which is why the UserControl concept is so useful whereas in the latter you operate on very sophisticated controls (e.g. 3rd party - in my last gig we used an incredible grid control via a small company called Infralution)
The main problem I would see is with layouts since the rendering model is a little different than the web. I know nothing about your application but if it "works" that is what is most important. I assume in this case you use things like the FlowLayoutPanel and the TableLayoutPanel properly.
If you want to go a more canonical route, take a look beyond simply creating components at how you can use the inheritance model to composite your application in a more robust way - having a base Form class that has containers for where your "UserControl" type components go and then using some kind of interface based dependency injection to swap them out while the application is running.
Finally, take a look at some of the open source Windows Forms applications out there to see if you're being too hard on yourself since common UI and reusable components are a goal in every application. Even though I've always thought Microsoft's Patterns & Practices stuff teetered towards being bloated, there are some good ideas and you should study some of the approaches of the Composite UI Application Block they put out.
Okay, not finally, there's one more thing I'd like to add: take a long hard look at WPF which will bring back a lot of the concepts from your web development days and give you that kind of power in a desktop application.
It seems that Silverlight/WPF are the long term future for user interface development with .NET. This is great because as I can see the advantage of reusing XAML skills on both the client and web development sides. But looking at WPF/XAML/Silverlight they seem very large technologies and so where is the best place to get start?
I would like to hear from anyone who has good knowledge of both and can recommend which is a better starting point and why.
Should you learn ASP.NET or Winforms first? ASP or MFC? HTML or VB? C# or VB?
Set aside the idea that there is a logical progression through what has become a highly complex interwoven set of technologies, and take a step back and ask yourself a series of questions:
What are your goals; how do you want to balance profit against enjoyment
Are you short term oriented or in for the long haul
Are you the type of person who likes to get good at something and do it a lot or do you get bored once you fully understand it?
The next and hardest step is to come to accept that any advice you are given is bound to be wrong; and the longer the time horizon the more likely it is to be incorrect. If the advice is for more than six to 12 months, the probability the advice is wildly incorrect approaches 1.
I can only tell you my story, quickly. In 2000 I was happy as a consultant working profitably in C++ on Windows applications, writing about ASP.NET and WinForms. then I saw C# and the world turned upside down. I never went back.
Two years ago I had the same kind of revelation, only an order of magnitude bigger, stronger and with more conviction about Silverlight. Yes, WPF is magnificent, and it may be that I'm all wet about this, but I believe in my gut that Silverlight changes everything. There was no doubt then and there is no doubt today that Silverlight is the most important development platform for Microsoft since .NET (certainly) and possibly since the switch to C++.
In a nutshell, here is why. I don't understand where its limitations are. With most platforms I do: you can do this, but you can't do that. WPF is a pretty good case in point, as was ASP.Net and WinForms and, well really everything until now.
With Silverlight, I don't see the boundaries yet. Silverlight has already leaped off the desktop onto phones, and I don't see any reason for it to stop there. Yes, it is true, it is bound by the browser, but I see that less as a jail cell than as a tank in which Silverlight will be riding over lots of terrain (it must be very late, I should go to bed).
In any case, for now, learning Silverlight is a gas, there is a lot of material on the Silverlight.net site, and what is the very best thing about learning Silverlight is that if you don't see what you need you can holler at me and I'll make sure you get it pretty quickly.
Enjoy, good luck and the dirty little secret is you'll be fine whichever you choose. It's all just software.
-jesse
Jesse Liberty
"Silverlight Geek"
I'd say go with Silverlight first!
I have programmed with WPF and Silverlight before.
But as Silverlight is a subset of WPF if you go in too deep and try to switch to writing Silverlight applications, you'll be scratching your heads looking for that "tag" you learned to love in WPF but is not available in Silverlight.
When you master the basic things in Silverlight first, the extra mechanism/trigger/whatever features in WPF will simply add to most of what you've already known.
Silverlight in WPF differs at the features level, not just some missing controls or animations. Take the WPF triggers mechanism for example, is not available fully in Silverlight.
So learning the smaller subset first, you can extend that knowledge to the full set later, but if you started at the full set and gets addicted to some of the niceties available, you'll have trouble down the line when someone asks you to port your designed-utilizing-WPF apps to Silverlight.
I'll go against the grain and say learn WPF first.
Here's my reasoning:
Much more resources are available for WPF than Silverlight, such as books, blogs, and msdn documentation
WPF Books
You're not dealing with a Beta, moving target
You don't have to deal with working with only asynchronous calls
Not limited by lack of features such as Merged Dictionaries, Triggers, TileBrushes, etc.
You don't have to worry about re-learning to do things correctly because of lacks of features in SL
Silverlight is a stripped down version of WPF so it should have fewer things to learn inside. On the other hand, the two platforms have different targets (web & rich client) so I guess it depends on what app you're going to build.
If you just want to learn for yourself (no app in the close future) I'd pick Silverlight because it would be less to assimilate. Still, Silverlight is pretty much a moving target, much more than WPF, so you'll have to keep up with some changes from time to time (the joys of being an early adopter :)).
WPF has lots more stuff that you will probably want to use at some point but I would wait for the needs to arise first.
Every industry expert I've heard on podcasts, blogs and interviews recommend learning Silverlight first and then gradually moving to WPF which is a huge UI framework.
Silverlight is light and allows you to work on smaller subset of controls and features such that you get your head around this new UI building paradigm based on,
Templating
DataBinding
Styles
Update: 07/2011
I hate to mention this, but in recent times Microsoft has put more focus on HTML5, Javascript and CSS by bringing forward powers of IE 9 and IE 10, as well as the upcoming Windows 8.
More and more developers and CTOs are skeptical about Silverlight as a LOB application platform as the time passes by, we are suspecting Silverlight will be limited to Windows Phone and niche, domain areas like healthcare of graphics related applications rather than a regular LOB app.
As it seems right now, as of summer 2011, the future might look fragmented with more opportunities for pure web technologies (HTML5, JS and CSS) as opposed to a plugin and OS-specific UI technology.
I would start by learning XAML, by reading a few tutorials and playing around with XAMLPad. This will give you a feel for the basics before actually building an app.
I would start with WPF and doing very simple control familiarizaton samples. You goal should be to learn XAML and Binding. So if you just create some basic WPF window apps will bootstrap your learning speed. Then eventually you can move to silverlight. Yeah as other mentioned here Silverlight is a subset of WPF.
Well, it depends on what you are going to be working on. If you are working on client/server, then I would go with WPF. If you are working in an environment where you can guarantee that .Net is installed on all of the machines, then I would go with WPF as well, because you can use what is called an XBAP, which is a WPF application that is run through the browser.
It's really up to you. However, I would state that silverlight is not RTM yet, and WPF is. WPF has a lot of books out on the subject, where silverlight does not. It may be easier to get the whole Zen of WPF by reading a few of those books, and then dive into which ever one you would like to play with.
Just keep in mind that silverlight has a subset of the controls of WPF, a paired down .Net framework, and does not do synchronous calls. As long as you know that up front, you can start learned the core of the whole foundation and tailor your practical experience later on to whichever technology is best for you.
Some tips at Getting started with Silverlight Development