Big announcement on my iOS blog

I made a big announcement on my iOS blog, which I think many .NET developers might want to know about. To find out what’s up, head over to iJoshSmith and take a look at this.

Master WPF on your iPhone

After being obsessed with WPF for so many years, I can’t just forget about it. Even though my focus is now on iOS development, I still think that WPF is an awesome platform. That’s why I wrote an iPhone app named Master WPF. It contains 500 questions, spread across 28 topics, that I painstakingly wrote, organized, and proofread until my eyes bled. The questions will help any WPF developer sharpen their skills.

It’s for WPF noobs, gurus, and everyone in between.

Master WPF on your iPhone or iPod Touch

You can download Master WPF for free on your iPhone or iPod Touch, running iOS 5 or greater. The app comes with 15 free questions so that you can try it out. If you decide that you want to master WPF with my app, you can make a small in-app purchase to unlock all 500 questions.

Think of it as a donation to a recovering WPF addict.

Screenshots of Master WPF

For more info about Master WPF, please check out http://masterwpf.com

My alter ego published an iPhone app

I have been learning about iPhone development over the past few months, and enjoying it very much. The culmination of my learning so far is an app called Two Letters which is now available in the App Store. It’s a game that helps you learn and memorize the two-letter words used in Scrabble and crossword puzzles.

Two Letters can be found here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/two-letters/id404274803

Have a great day!

Free MVVM Guidance in Visual Studio

If you are curious about the Model-View-ViewModel pattern, or would like to have handy reference material at your fingertips, look no further.  My good friend Karl Shifflett has just released an amazingly comprehensive set of MVVM training material, called “In the Box.” Why is it called that? Because all of the guidance is displayed in Visual Studio!  If the topic you’re reading references some code or XAML file, you simply click on the link and that file opens.  Pretty slick!

You can visit this project’s home page here.  Enjoy!

I’ve gone Mac (will I ever come back?)

I couldn’t resist any longer.  I bought a Mac.

Fear not, I’m still madly in love with WPF and rather fond of Silverlight.  But let’s face it, Apple is doing very, very well these days.  Everyone and their grandmother has an iPhone or iPad or MacBook, etc.  For the sake of career growth, job security, skills development, not to mention a shiny new toy, I decided to take the plunge.  I’m really excited about learning Objective-C, Cocoa, CocoaTouch, MonoTouch, and all the rest.  It’s like Christmas morning for me!

My journey of  learning how to tell an Apple device what to do will be logged in my new blog called iJoshSmith.com.  If you’re interested in seeing what it takes for a WPF/SL/.NET dev to warp his mind into Appleness, check it out!

Another review of Advanced MVVM

A few days ago I received a comment from someone named Joe on my blog.  He was expressing concern over several aspects of my book Advanced MVVM, including the fact that it is written about a relatively simple game, not something more complicated.  After Joe read the book his apprehensions about it disappeared, and he kindly left me this comment:

Josh,

Ok, after reading your book, I have to say “Wow!” Not only have you managed to help me understand some of the frustrations I had with MVVM development, but your book also made some good points (which I shared with my development manager) and reinforced with real examples of issues I faced working on a project using that pattern.

I was very (pleasantly) surprised reading your take on the code-behind vs. NO code-behind mentality. I myself prefer the middle ground, but for some time was forced to do the latter. Yes, it did create several layers of very difficult to follow, understand and maintain code; from your notes and my examples, I was able to reach a compromise on how we should utilize ‘code-behind’.

Now, an interesting story –our architect chose the MVVM pattern after reading your article in MSDN in 2009. However, they chose to enforce “no code-behind” at all for the sake of testability.

The book is awesome; if you can mix MVVM with Prism and come up with a nice 300+ page book with some nice distilled information like that, I’d a) like to help write it; and b) shell out at least $50.00.

Cheers!

Joe

P.S. you’re right, there is no “Silver Bullet”; however, it would be nice to have some guide or set of documentation as to what works well when and where, especially when certain design patterns are applied to solve a problem.

It sounds like Advanced MVVM has another happy customer! 🙂

BubbleBurst v1.1 release

I finally found a way to reproduce a minor issue in BubbleBurst, the application reviewed in my Advanced MVVM book.  I fixed the issue, which had to do with bursting a bubble group during an animated undo transition, and updated the source code and download files on CodePlex.  If you’re interested in seeing the fix, it’s associated with changeset 43211.

By the way, I would like to thank all of you who have bought Advanced MVVM.  I am shocked at how many copies have sold so far.  This far exceeds my expectations!

Advanced MVVM is now available in paperback

I have had quite a few people say that they want to print my Advanced MVVM e-book.  The DRM protected PDF that you get when you buy the e-book does not allow itself to be printed, as per the rules of Lulu (the online publisher).  So, to help people read the book in the format that they want, I made it possible to buy a hard copy of the book.  You can get the paperback version here.

I am also in the process of making Advanced MVVM available for the Kindle e-reader.  I will blog about it once Amazon approves my book and makes it available online.

My book about Advanced MVVM

I have been working tirelessly for weeks on what I consider to be my masterpiece.  I’ve published a book called Advanced MVVM.  It is a 52 page deep dive into some complex problems and solutions in an MVVM application I wrote, called BubbleBurst.

You can buy a hard copy, or a digital copy which can be read in the free Adobe Digital Editions e-book reader.  It is also possible to read the book on your Amazon Kindle, by purchasing it here.

The full source code is available on CodePlex: http://bubbleburst.codeplex.com/

The e-book’s Table of Contents is shown below:

Chapter 1 – Introduction

• The Demo Application
• The Source Code

Chapter 2 – Brief Overview of WPF and MVVM

• WPF
• Learn More about WPF
• MVVM
• Learn More about MVVM

Chapter 3 – View Architecture Overview

• BubbleBurstView
• BubbleMatrixView
• BubbleCanvas
• BubbleView
• GameOverView
• What Should a View Do?

Chapter 4 – ViewModel Architecture Overview

• Core ViewModel Classes
• BubbleBurstViewModel
• BubbleMatrixViewModel
• Creating Bubbles with BubbleFactory
• Finding Bubble Groups
• A ViewModel is a Model of a View

Chapter 5 – Animated Transitions

• What is an Animated Transition?
• Designing for Animated Transitions
• Animated Transitions in BubbleBurst
• Creating Animated Transitions in the ViewModel
• Displaying Animated Transitions in the View

Chapter 6 – Unlimited Undo with Animated Transitions

• Responding to User Input
• Creating Undo Tasks
• Managing Bubble Locations
• Benefits of a Task-based Architecture

Chapter 7 – The Game-Over Dialog

• Opening the GameOver Dialog
• Closing the GameOver Dialog

Chapter 8 – Recap

• Recap

Special Thanks

About the Author

If you are interested in learning more about my e-book, please click here.

Enjoy!

Karl Shifflett’s Magnum Opus

My good friend and comrade in crime, Karl Shifflett, recently published a huge body of excellent work.  He has been working for quite some time on Ocean, a code generation system that blows my mind, and BBQ Shack, a great line-of-business WPF and Silverlight application that is built by Ocean.  His prolonged effort has resulted in some high-quality software and documentation (including videos!).

I highly suggest you set aside some time to check out what Karl has been up to.  It’s amazing work.

My hat is off to you, Karl!