Unit testing Caliburn applications in NUnit
This is part three in my series on Caliburn, if you haven't please read Part 1: Getting started with Caliburn and Part 2: Multiple Views on one ViewModel.
In this post I will look into the unit testing features of Caliburn and try to give a quick introduction to the essentials of what you need to know to write a couple of small unit tests in NUnit. The documentations on caliburn.codeplex.com on unit testing is fairly good, so I will only try to fill in some missing pieces and give a quick start guide to unit testing Caliburn. If or when you bump into problems with the simple setup described here, it's time to move over to more detailed documentation available in both the documentation and discussion forum on Codeplex.
Optional parameters in C# 4.0
A while back I blogged about the great features of the Dynamic Language Runtime introduced in .Net 4.0. Today I will look into another great feature introduced in C# 4.0, namely the new named and optional parameters.
If you are familiar with C++, you have probably used optional parameters earlier, but C# has missed this feature until now. As a work around we had to use overloaded methods, but in the concept of clean code, I'd rather prefer to use optional parameters!
Splash screen in WPF
Remember the time when adding a splash screen to application was a hassel? In WPF this is now extremely simply, follow these few steps, and you splash screen is available in your WPF application!
Converting from Blogger to Wordpress
- Allot of hard work
- Leaving the old familiar Blogger tool
- Learning Wordpress
- Trying to convert my old Feedburner readers to my new domain
- Making the shift without too much traffic loss
Luckily most of my traffic are from referring sites, so I guess with a little work and a couple of emails, I could redirect much of the traffic over to ISerialized.com. Beyond the statistical facts, what are my lessons learned from these last couple of days?!
The is keyword: Yet another hidden treasure of C#
A while back i blogged about the yield keyword and called it a hidden treasure of C# as I seldom see it used, and many senior developers never use it! Today, I came across a similar one, namely the is-keyword. And frankly, I had actually forgotten about myself, even though I have used it in the past on several occasions.
Dynamic Language Runtime in .Net 4.0
The upcoming .Net 4.0 contains many new and exciting features, in this blog post I will describe some of the new features of the DLR including the dynamic keyword.
To quote MSDN:
The dynamic language runtime (DLR) is a runtime environment that adds a set of services for dynamic languages to the common language runtime (CLR). The DLR makes it easier to develop dynamic languages to run on the .NET Framework and to add dynamic features to statically typed languages.
The architecture of the DLR in combination with the Common Language Runtime CLR and C#, IronPython, IronRuby and Visual Basic is visualized through this illustration:
As seen from the illustration, the DLR adds three new and important features to the CLR:
Why use Custom Control instead of User Control in WPF?
When I first started experimenting with WPF I was quite confused with the new custom control introduced in WPF. I did a quick Google search but never got the full understanding of the difference, but I read somewhere that in most cases a custom control was not necessary, so I just focused on the regular user control back then.
What’s new in WPF 4.0
Microsoft has just release a series of short (15 minutes long) how-to videos for WPF 4.0 introducing the various new features of WPF 4.0.
Getting started with Caliburn Part 2: Multiple Views on one ViewModel
The documentation and tutorials on Caliburn is still very limited, and is one of the biggest obstacles getting started with Caliburn right now. In this post I hope to fill some of the gaps I have seen in the lack of documentation by showing how you can easily hook up two Views to one ViewModel.
Extension methods in 60 seconds
Extension methods enables you to hook up extra methods to an already existing (and possibly sealed) class, without the need of subclassing or changing the original class. Lets say I have a class from a third party vendor I use, which contains information on persons
A quick start guide to yield return and yield break
The yield statement was introduced in .Net 2.0, but I am a bit surprised that I meet many senior developers who has never used yield return (and yield break)! For some strange reason, yield has become some kind of hidden treasure in .Net. Through this post, I hope I can show some simple examples, and give some of the ideas, benefits and limitations with yield.
Getting started with Caliburn
The lack of documentation and examples of usage is one of the biggest obstacles getting started with Caliburn. I hope this article can help somewhat!
One of my biggest fears when starting a new project is heading in the wrong direction and not realizing that we are headed for disaster until it's too late. Due to architectural decisions, this is always a worry, but the new project is based on WPF, the risk and possibility of a failure is drastically increased. I'm afraid that my WPF projects become "Windows Formish", not taking advantage of MVP/ MVVM.
This is Part 1 of my series on Caliburn, Part 2 on multiple views on one ViewModel can be found here, and Part 3 on unit testing Caliburn can be found here.
Caliburn was designed to aid in the development of WPF and Silverlight applications, enabling easier use of among other MVP and MVVM. This article will be a walkthrough of a rather simple WPF application based on Caliburn. The example used here is a very simple application retrieving a value from a textbox, publishing it to an EventAggregator, and then let another component handle the published message. Hopefully I am able to show some of the advantages of Caliburn through this example.
Getting started with Windows 7 (Tips and tricks)
One of the biggest problem with each new version of a framework or OS is getting known with all the new features and functions. I personally never have the time to sit down and read pages upon pages each time I upgrade, but today I came across a really good page with quick videos of Windows 7 tips and tricks. Short videos between 30 sec and 1,5 minute.

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