Archives
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A Communication System for XAML Applications
In any application, you want to keep the coupling between any two or more objects as loose as possible. Coupling happens when one class contains a property that is used in another class, or uses another class in one of its methods. If you have this situation, then this is called strong or tight coupling. One popular design pattern to help with keeping objects loosely coupled is called the Mediator design pattern. The basics of this pattern are very simple; avoid one object directly talking to another object, and instead use another class to mediate between the two. As with most of my blog posts, the purpose is to introduce you to a simple approach to using a message broker, not all of the fine details.
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A WPF Message Box you can Style
You go to great pains to add styles, colors, gradients, and a really cool look and feel to your WPF application only to have that ruined by the standard Windows message box as shown in Figure 1.
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Create your own WPF Button User Controls
In Figure 1 you can see examples of the standard WPF Button controls. You can add a drop shadow and you can change the color, but you can’t change much else without creating a whole new control template. For example, you are unable to modify the BorderBrush or the BorderThickness properties of the Button control. Additionally you might want to use some other animation than the default, which again requires you to change the control template.
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XML Activator
All too often I see people using switch/Select Case statements when using a Factory pattern. The problem with this is if you wish to add the ability to instantiate a new class in your Factory, you need to add a new “case” statement, re-compile the code and redeploy that DLL back out to your client machines, or your server(s). Another way to implement a Factory pattern is to use Reflection and Interfaces to dynamically create an instance of a class. This blog post will show you how to use an XML file, an Interface and the Assembly class to dynamically load a list of assemblies and classes to load into an application at runtime.
Past Blog Content
Blog Archive
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2015
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2014 (18)
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2013 (11)
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2012 (19)
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2011 (29)
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2010 (19)
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2009 (28)
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2008 (0)
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2007 (14)
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2006 (6)