how to build an outlook style application – part 1

How to build an outlook style application - Erwin van der Valk's blog

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Building Outlook Style Applications with Prism

Notes From the Team Room — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 04:27:44 GMT

Erwin has posted on building an Outlook style application .  He shows a number of nice features

re: how to build an outlook style application

lexer — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:56:44 GMT

Hi,

Nice post! But often we need specific region configuration for each application section.

For example in email section we have only main region, which is streached on whole screen width, but in daily task manager we have 3 regions (left (10%),main(80%),right(10%))

That is why we need to load some kind of region templates or have an ability to dynamically add nested regions.

What u think about it? Is it possible with current version of Prism?

Thanks,

Alexey Zakharov.

re: how to build an outlook style application

erwinvandervalk — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:26:47 GMT

Yes this is possible. In too many ways than i can describe.

The easiest way is to have the shell expose only the regions are required by ALL views. So have the daily task view expose three other regions which you can then populate with other views.

An other way is to make the regions of the shell resize based on their contents. (an empty region should then be invisible)

And you can also create 'template' views. A template view will then have the left, main and right region, but each version of the template view will display them differently. Just make sure you add the view in the 'activate' method and remove the template view in the deactivate.

re: how to build an outlook style application

lexer — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 08:15:42 GMT

Thanks Erwin. I will try it. =)

re: how to build an outlook style application

blackLabrador — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:56:58 GMT

Hi,

Making a video tutorial on how implement a good navigation practice will be really useful. How can add transitions between 2 views (for example a fade transition before moving to another page) ?

PRISM V2 is really great, but even if you provided a lot of quick start in the download, I think you still need more videos like the one you did in 4 parts. That was amazing. Also, why don't you post anything on the Silvelight community website ? It's great to learn good ways to implements a code and sharing a framework

thanks for all your works !

re: how to build an outlook style application

erwinvandervalk — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:54:24 GMT

Navigation.. That's one of the things we would have liked to tackle in Prism V2, but unfortunately we didn't have time to do.

If I have time, I might put up a simple demo on how to do some basic navigation scenario's in the next couple of weeks. However, building a generic navigation solution that can tackle a lot of scenario's is a LOT of work. More work than i have spare time anyway ;)

Hopefully, if we get to do a Prism V3, we can tackle some navigation scenario's.

re: how to build an outlook style application

Woggly — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:02:35 GMT

Hi!

Thanks for this great sample application!

I implemented this in my application and changed the SingleActiveRegion to a Region. My UseCases are added to a TabControl. The User is able to close these tabs. I tried to implement a deactivation of the UseCases, but I get the error, that the RegionManager does not contain the Regions in the removed view when closing tabs. Will you show how to deactivate UseCases when you have some time?

Thanks,

Woggly

re: how to build an outlook style application

Gustavoc — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:42:46 GMT

"...if we get to do a Prism V3..."

What do you mean "IF"?

re: how to build an outlook style application

blackLabrador — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:21:43 GMT

Hi Erwin,

Following the new release of SL 3 will you adapt Prism V2 to this release ? for example, back to the navigation Framework, SL3 provides Frames and Pages. The region Manager is therefore becoming somehow obsolet ?

Many thanks

Regards

re: how to build an outlook style application

blackLabrador — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:26:53 GMT

And yes, by the way, commenting Gustavoc =>

" ... If we get to do a Prism V3 ..."

I do agree, what do you mean by "IF"

I've been fighting to use the PRISM framework as the official guidance from Microsoft.... I hope that you guys are really willing to provide us with more updates on this framework and not just abandon this project as a V2 has been written..... I will really look stupid if there is no more follow up

re: how to build an outlook style application

erwinvandervalk — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:47:36 GMT

It's good to hear that you guys feel so passionate about Prism.

We have talked about doing a Prism V3 and I certainly hope there is going to be one but unfortunately, i can't guarantee it. When our plans become more concrete, i'll definetly let you know.

We always try to invest our time in area's we feel are the most important. As silverlight and WPF is very important to us, i think there is a good chance.

re: how to build an outlook style application

erwinvandervalk — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:53:09 GMT

Hi Woggly,

The reason you can't deactivate the region through the regionmanager is because this region is not registered to any regionmanager. It also doesn't have a name...

In my implementation of this app, i decided that I wanted an application controller to be responsible for activating and deactivating the use cases. That's why i didn't use a 'normal' region that I declared in xaml.

There are several ways you can make the region you've created in the regionmanager. The easiest is: Give the region a name (region.name property) and then add the region to a regionmanager. RegionManager.Regions.Add(region, region.Name);

Hope this helps.

Erwin

re: how to build an outlook style application

erwinvandervalk — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:00:36 GMT

Ok, I enquired around a bit with regards to our planning.

As far as I can tell now, we are planning to do an other version of Prism, where we're going to rev Prism for the next version of Visual studio and .Net 4.0 and Silverlight 3.

We don't know yet when this is going to occur, but I'll keep you posted.

Hope this helps,

Erwin

Модель master-details в CAL

Павел Ивченков — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:50:04 GMT

Реализация модели отношений master-details при написании приложения с использова

re: how to build an outlook style application

planga — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:05:55 GMT

Any updates as far as loading "sub" views (or UseCases) into a region from within a module? For example: a module loads a toolbar, then the user clicks a button on the toolbar which loads the corresponding view into the main region (all from within a module).

I see that this work was started in this sample but not finished? It appears that the code that handles this (ShowUseCase) says "Work in progress...". As far as I can tell, the ShowUseCase method is never called either.

I'm trying to model an application around this sample, but I really require the ability load/unload multiple views within a module from a toolbar or menu. I'm not having any luck figuring out how to do this within the framework presented in this sample.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

-Patrick

re: how to build an outlook style application

stewarth — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:02:21 GMT

First of all, I really like these PRISM tutorials so keep them coming.

I currently working on a new project that is planned to use PRISM and investigating technologies for it.

One of things, that I would be intersted in is the recommend method for handling dialog screens as modules.

What I would like to see is similar tutorials using Expression Blend 2/3 in conjunction with PRISM setup. This is what I am interested in enterrprise applications at work. What would be interested is steps in making a PRISM based User interface from ground up using Blend that once done could be handled off to staff of Services API developers to developed the services behind the scene. Ideally it would be nice if all interface development on client side will be done in Blend and API done using Visual Studio 2008.

I am also be interested if anything in Prism will allow the modules to be in seperate domains - this is so if one screen in application. crashes it does not crash the reset of applications. This may not be the intent of PRISM. Is it invision to have multiple application using same shell - or should each application have its own shell.

Anyway thanks for information.

Stewart

re: how to build an outlook style application

erwinvandervalk — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:08:15 GMT

Hi steward,

There is a section in the prism docs on designer - developer interaction.

I personally feel that it's better to have a designer and a developer work together to get the UI done, rather than having a designer create the whole UI up front. Because inevitably, while building the api you are going to run into issues witih the design and you need the designers input to solve them.

I actually would argue that some of the code should be built BEFORE the designers come into play. For example, it's nice to have viewmodels in place, so the designers can use these to populate their views in blend with code.

What do you mean with dialog screens as modules? IMHO dialog screens and modules have different levels of granularity.

We explicitly did not tackle loading modules in different app domains, to keep the design as simple as possible. However, if you feel that you need that kind of functionality, you can write your own ModuleLoader that would do that.

This will mean however, that all the communication between modules will have to deal with cross appdomain communication. I recommend carefully weighing if that cost is worth the effort...

_Erwin

re: how to build an outlook style application

erwinvandervalk — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:08:15 GMT

Hi steward,

There is a section in the prism docs on designer - developer interaction.

What do you mean with dialog screens as modules? IMHO dialog screens and modules have different levels of granularity.

This will mean however, that all the communication between modules will have to deal with cross appdomain communication. I recommend carefully weighing if that cost is worth the effort...

_Erwin

re: how to build an outlook style application

patrickyong — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:07:04 GMT

When I compile your project I got the following error

Error 1 The type 'System.ComponentModel.INotifyPropertyChanged' is defined in an assembly that is not referenced. You must add a reference to assembly 'System, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=7cec85d7bea7798e'. C:\Users\v-payong\Desktop\PrismOutlook\OutlookStyle.Infrastructure\ModelVisualization\VisualizingRegion.cs 19 18 OutlookStyle.Infrastructure

Anything I missing?

re: how to build an outlook style application

stewarth — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:51:19 GMT

Erwin,

Thanks for the response.

On the Domain issue, you basically confirm what I was thinking about PRISM and I believe it not recommend to have more than one enterprise application in the same shell. Is this true?

On the Blend issue, basically my thought is we need a basic code layout and orgranization - so that designers could work. Currently our workforce UI designers are the coders - but this is primary because existing products are WinForm based and Blend leads to designers and coders.

I am desiring an code organization so that we could have seperate designers working with screens one day and looking for recommendations on best way to handle this.

I am right now converting a WPF prototype into PRISM layout for this possibility.

On the dialog issue, I issue, I basically talking about recommended usage of sperate Windows in PRISM stuff. I like the ideas of regions and can we create a region as deperate window.

On the region stuff can we create regions inside of regions.

Stewart

re: how to build an outlook style application

stewarth — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:47:46 GMT

I been working with Regions and this stuff is awesome. I am curious if there is a way to programatically hide and show and region.

I likely could do it the way I did it prototype with setting size and visibility on control. But I wonder if there is method in PRISM.

how to build an outlook style application with prism v2 – Part 2

Erwin van der Valk's blog: Practicing patterns — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:45:38 GMT

A while ago, I put an example application on my blog on how to build an outlook style application . The

re: how to build an outlook style application – part 1

hnieef — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 06:23:43 GMT

can we develop shell using ribbon component like mv-vc. can you guide us or give some example?

re: how to build an outlook style application – part 1

Pooran — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:12:56 GMT

Hi,

I do get the following error when I compile and execute the code

System.Threading.SynchronizationLockException occurred

Message="Object synchronization method was called from an unsynchronized block of code."

Source="Microsoft.Practices.Unity"

StackTrace:

at e:\Builds\Unity\UnityTemp\Compile\Unity\Src\Unity\Lifetime\SynchronizedLifetimeManager.cs:line 109

Any idea how to fix it?

re: how to build an outlook style application – part 1

Pooran — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:32:44 GMT

Can you share a sample code which makes a region as SingleActiveRegion in silverlight. I have a region that needs to be host more than one view based on some events.