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).

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!
Cinch V2 is finished!
2010-06-29 17:13 by Roland Auer
A Rich Full Featured WPF/SL MVVM Framework
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!