I know it is Friday, but has taken five days to recover enough to talk about that weekend. Too bad it sounds more exciting than it was. I spent the weekend trying to understand data binding and data models.
I have been working on my next Windows Phone app and ran into a problem. For some reason, the text was being clipped. It appears that there is a size limit on objects on the phone. Thanks to mSpot and the Microsoft forums, we were able to find a workaround. Rather than a single TextBlock, I replaced it with a horizontal StackPanel of a collection of TextBlocks. With a bit of reworking I was able to create a working demo. Unfortunately, the values were hardcoded, but did not update properly when variables were used. This led me to the fun weekend of exploring bonding, views and models.
The first task was a bit of research that showed that other than being a palindrome, there were several spins on what MVVM really is. At one point I was expecting a version by Hans Christian Andersen (Emperor’s New Clothes). There is a lot of praise for it, but little substance and when there is it appears to be a lot of smoke and mirrors. Why do people try to inflate their importance by making things more complex that they really are. Why not keep it simple like Iris Classon does. I would love to hear her spin on ViewModels and MVVM.
I like the idea behind MVVM, it is simple and the division of labour makes sense. I just do not understand MVVM lite or why I would need it.
As part of the MVVM journey I also took at iCommand (was this Apple approved?) For the time being, I have put it aside, but it appeared that it was implemented as a series of inter-related code segments. I have a strong feeling that I would have better luck following the pea in a shell game than following the logic behind some of the iCommand implementations I have seen.
Anyway, time to get back to finishing that app and try and see if it actually makes money.
John Marshall… Visio MVP Visio.MVPs.org
john Visio MVP 