Essential XAML

Windows Phone Enhanced Application Bar or Bindable AppBar – Part I by Tomer Shamam

I’ve just got sick working with the strange implementation of the default Windows Phone Silverlight Application Bar, and the reasons are: Nonstandard Silverlight control lack of Data Binding Lack of Commanding support Completely non-MVVM friendly So I developed my own solution which looks much the same without the cons. Usage of the standard AppBar: Code Snippet <!--Sample code showing usage of ApplicationBar--> < phone : PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar > < shell : ApplicationBar...

Implicit DataTemplate in Silverlight 4 Composite UI – Get ready for Silverlight 5 (Part III) by Tomer Shamam

In this post I'll show how did I implemented the ItemsControl implicit data-template using the ImplicitItemsTemplateBehavior attached behavior. But first, lets talk a bit about how WPF searches for an implicit data template, given a collection of items, so we can mimic that behavior in Silverlight. Having an ItemsControl with an ItemsSource property set to a collection of type Shape, WPF looks at the ItemsControl.ItemTemplate. In case that one is missing, and there is no ItemTemplateSelector...

Implicit DataTemplate in Silverlight 4 Composite UI – Get ready for Silverlight 5 (Part II) by Tomer Shamam

In this post I'll show how did I implemented the ContentControl implicit data-template using the ImplicitContentTemplateBehavior attached behavior. But first, lets talk a bit about how WPF searches for an implicit data template, given a content, so we can mimic that behavior in Silverlight.   Having a ContentControl with a Content set to an instance of type Circle, WPF looks at the ControlControl.ItemTemplate. In case that one is missing, and there is no ItemTemplateSelector, it changes...

Implicit DataTemplate in Silverlight 4 Composite UI – Get ready for Silverlight 5 (Part I) by Tomer Shamam

I'm using Prism 4 in one of my Silverlight 4 Composite UI. Working with Prism, there are two ways populating a Region: You can populate it with a UI element, which is the view, or placing the view-model directly. Personally I support the idea that a UI element must not be treated directly from the Application logic, and there should be ZERO UI elements in the Application logic. So natively, populating a region with a view-model instead of a view sounds more reasonable for me. With WPF things...

Windows Phone 7 Bing Maps Must Have October 2010 Update by Tomer Shamam

If you’ve been running Windows Phone 7 Bing Map Control for Silverlight, you may noticed several bugs and especially performance issues. Microsoft published this update which includes 2 new utilities and address a performance issue in the Bing Maps Control. Here is a video demonstrating the Bing Map Control running on WP7 Emulator. A walk around the Statue of Liberty using Bing Maps for WP7

Windows Phone 7 Custom Message Box – Update by Tomer Shamam

I’ve fixed some issues in my Custom Message Box . Feel free to download it from here .

WPF Shape Editor works with MVVM by Tomer Shamam

Haven't heard about the famous WPF and Silverlight MVVM design pattern yet? Well, I have one think to say about it: “MVVM is like women, complicated but necessary. You can’t live with it and you can’t live without it”… This time I want to concentrate on how to create a WPF shape editor custom control which works perfectly with the lovely MVVM design pattern. Lets say that you want be able to draw shapes on top of Video, Image or whatever, but this time you have a view-model behind which contains...

Windows Phone 7 Custom Message Box by Tomer Shamam

UPDATE: Notification box has been updated: Take a look at http://wpassets.codeplex.com , the new home place for NotificationBox and others. I’ve wrote a custom message box called NotificationBox for the Windows Phone 7. It gives you an option to pick whatever button you like to have inside the message box. Also It provides a cool feature which is ‘Show this message again’ with isolated settings persistency so you won’t have to create this mechanism by yourself each time you want to give an option...

UI Virtualization vs. Data Virtualization (Part 2) by Tomer Shamam

Introduction In part 1 I’ve talked about the UI Virtualization concept in WPF, and explained how it is differs from Data Virtualization concept. In this post I would like to share with you a unique solution for Data Virtualization implementation in WPF. Recall from the previous post, Data Virtualization implementation raises several problems, and there is no out-of-the-box solution for Data Virtualization in WPF. First problem: How do we fake scrollbars, so the user will think that it has all the...

WPF DataGrid Search and Highlight by Tomer Shamam

In this post I would like to share with you a simple solution for searching and highlighting text in the WPFToolkit or WPF 4.0 DataGrid. The Problem Lets say for example that you have a DataGrid with several columns that may display text. Now you want to be able to search terms in these text parts. For example: Proposed Solution 1. Create an attached property of type string called SearchTerm for attaching the data-grid with the search term provided by a TextBox (see images). < TextBox x : Name...

The Future of WPF - PDC08 by Tomer Shamam

Although Silverlight 2.0 is biting WPF in its tail, and Microsoft promotes Silverlight 2.0 for future LOB applications, and that Silverlight is planned to go out-of-prison (browser), there is a nice plan for WPF 4.0. I'll start by saying that few controls such as the long awaiting DataGrid , Calendar and DatePicker controls are now released, and you can download the toolkit from here . There is a new cool WPF Ribbon control which is currently CTP, and you can also download it from here . * In...