I have great news for anyone who is interested in learning how to create MVVM applications, either in WPF or Silverlight! Craig Shoemaker, host of the Polymorphic Podcast and Pixel8 podcast, recently published two screencasts that show how to build MVVM applications from the ground up. I am the guest on the WPF screencast, and Tim Heuer leads the way in the Silverlight version. I think that the WPF screencast is a great complement to my ‘WPF Apps With The Model-View-ViewModel Design Pattern’ article.
Also, if you are interested in User Experience Design Patterns (which you should be if you are a professional front-end developer!), be sure to check out Craig’s podcast about Quince, with Ambrose Little.
Here are the links:
Implementing Model-View-ViewModel in WPF
Implementing Model-View-ViewModel in Silverlight
Implementing MVVM & Exploring UX Design Patterns
Enjoy!
Josh Smith on WPF 
Hi Josh,
Great video, really enjoyed.
In the example you showed the result calling the MessageBox directly from the ViewModel, this could be acceptable but being purist, this should be managed in a different way, especially if in some cases it is not a simple MessageBox but a dialog box developed with a MVVM pattern.
How can this separation be achieved?
A video or demo showing this will be appreciated 😉
Antonio
Hey Josh,
I loved the MVVM video. Like Antonio said, though, I’d like to find out more about how you do dialogs. I saw an old comment of your’s that said to use a factory to display the dialog. That is what I have been doing, but it still doesn’t feel quite right.
I’d love to see what you think a good implementation of it is.
Thanks!
Thanks for the video Josh.
Walking through the example helps to solidify the concepts.
David Roh
I’m really glad to hear it, David! Thanks. I think it’s great that the WPF and SL communities are so active, and interested in learning how to best harness the platforms to create solid architectures.
Is it just me, or is MVVM the most convoluted monstrosity ever?
Even coding a simple data app using this method would take years.
Kelvin,
You don’t need to build every WPF app using MVVM. There’s nothing wrong with using forms over data, if that’s what works for you.
Josh
this question goes back to your msdn viewmod article, but I missed commenting there and I think it’s still relavent so i figure i’ll try my luck here. as frequent user of the viewmdl pattern, i really liked your relaycommand relative to how you design your viewmods, but I was wondering how you would approach associating a keyboard shortcut with the command? Like say Control-S for the save you had on the new customer view.
by the way i also really liked your article and appreciate everything you’re doing to further wpf architecture in the wild.
Dan
Hi Josh,
Really cool stuff you’re doing with MVVM. I’m refactoring a project I’m currently working on just because I think this pattern is so important.
I’ve had one problem, though. I downloaded the MVVM sample for WPF, and it runs just fine. But when I load the project in Expression Blend 2, I can’t view/edit the MainWindow.xaml because it throws an exception. I’ve tried to resolve it myself, but no luck so far. Do you have any suggestions on making MVVM work well with Expression Blend?
Thanks!
–Stephen
Sorry, I should mention that the sample app I downloaded was the “MvvmDemoApp” from your MSDN Magazine article, not the simpler one from the video.
Josh;
I am trying to use your sample “Working with Checkboxes in the WPF TreeView” which works great, but I can not figure out how to have the FooViewModel view model that popluates the treeview with a method call to CreateFoos. I want to replace the CreateFoos hard coded data with a call to Ling in an SQL database, but I am missing something. can you provide a sample on replaceing CreateFoos method with a call using Ling to populate the viewmodel and the treeview control in WPF.
Thank you.