I am the winner!

2010-12-07 18:36 by Roland Auer

Yieeeehaaa!

MediaOwl Logo

In the last post I told you that I participate in a contest for Caliburn Micro. Guess who won! ME!

 

The application I made is called "MediaOwl" and is a search engine for movies and music. If you want to try it, click here. As it is a Silverlight application using the Framework Caliburn Micro, the source code is free. You can take a look at the code on CodePlex.

 

If you have any suggestions, improvements or questions, just email me.

 

Last but not least I want to give props to Rob Eisenberg for this great framework. Walk on like this!

Participating the Caliburn Micro Contest

2010-11-19 12:43 by Roland Auer

MediaOwl

MediaOwl Logo

After being absent for a while, I proudly anounce my participation in a Silverlight-Framework-Competition. The framework is called Caliburn Micro, an outstanding MVVM-framework for building applications in Silverlight (I already posted about the framework in this entry). My contribution is called MediaOwl, and it is a music and movie search engine, but above all, it is a Microsoft Silverlight 4 application, that shows how to use Caliburn Micro.

 

I have to point out that it is a sample application, not a real-world-application. That means you can look at this app and its code and get smart, and not that it is for reliable use. But anyway, you can try the app on this site!

 

As I published MediaOwl under MIT-license, you can even download the source code on Codeplex. If you find any errors, please leave me a message (e-mail, comment on Codeplex, letter... I appreciate everything!).

 

That's it for now! Ra

Discovering Caliburn Micro

2010-07-21 15:59 by Roland Auer

A Micro-Framework for WPF, SL and WP7

Some weeks ago, I blogged about Cinch V2. I had the intention to investigate this MVVM-Framework more, but since then, no more articles or docs have unfortunately been published. I decided to continue my quest for the ultimate MVVM-Framework. And so I came along Caliburn Micro (CM).

 

 

Caliburn Logo

Many of us may remember Caliburn V1, which had some (doubtless) ingenious implementations of hardly understandable patterns. In my opinion and for my purpose, it was easier to use as PRISM (aka CAG). And though there were docs and tuts, it was quite hard to keep the overview. After a while .NET 4 was released with some interesting features, and Rob Eisenberg (father of Caliburn) decided to improve Caliburn and work on a second version of his framework. And after his incredible contribution at MIX10, he decided to build a small (2000 LOC!) framework with great features, targetting WPF, Silverlight and WP7, and if that's not enough, it should also be easy to understand.

 

 

Caliburn Micro has key features like Action Message, Action Conventions, Binding Convention, Screens and Conductors, Event Aggregator, Coroutines and much more. If you don't know what these features mean, read Rob's introduction.

 

Currently, a documentation with basic samples is in progress, and the discussion-board on codeplex is quite active. I really love to work with CM, due to its Conventions, Screenmanagement and Action- and Couroutinehandling. That's simply great work of Rob Eisenberg, because it means no work for the developer.

 

Everyone, who searches for a helping hand developing clean applications in WPF/SL/SP7, should consider using Caliburn Micro. That's basically what I wanted to say!

Now I am an All-Star-Designer

2010-06-30 16:50 by Roland Auer

My .toolbox avatar

I'm proud to announce that I finally achieved the .toolbox-Award "All-Star-Designer"! The .toolbox-website is a possibility for wannabe-designers to extend their knowledge in design-principles and Microsoft Expression Blend! I found a link a few weeks ago on DreamSpark and participated. It was very funny, I learned many new things!

 

5 All-Star 
DESIGNI can only recommend .toolbox to any developer, who wants to learn some principles about design. Those courses are helpful especially to design neat small web-apps! Beside couses .toolbox offers some tutorials, especially on Expression Blend 4, as well.

 

Cinch V2 is finished!

2010-06-29 17:13 by Roland Auer

A Rich Full Featured WPF/SL MVVM Framework

 

Cinch Logo

Wohoo, not nearly half of us "intermediate developers" have used (or even discovered) half of the features of Cinch V1, now the second version is released. For those who don't know what I'm writing: Cinch is one of many supporting MVVM-Frameworks for WPF or/and Silverlight. Yes, there are many, and one is the best. Which one? Damn, we don't know yet, but thank god, so many days to come.

 

Thanks to Sacha Barber (who, on his behalf, gives many props to Marlon Grech), we now have a MVVM-Framework that makes extensive use of MEF. And every part-time-dev knows, MEF is great, it's soooo great, hardly anyone knows the possibilities.

 

Is there anything more to say? Hell no. Not me. But Sacha has started a series of articles describing the new features of Cinch V2. And, as he writes, it ain't be wrong to read his first series about Cinch V1.

 

I'm investigating Cinch V2 in every free minute the next weeks, hopefully I can write another entry, that says something more interesting than this one!