Introducing WpWinl 2.0.0 (prerelease version)

Today I have decided to take the plunge – I have released an early version of WpWinNl 2.0.0 to NuGet. This introduces quite some changes.

To start with, WpWinNl now consists of two packages:

• WpWinNlBasic, which contains all the stuff that is not dependent on MVVMLight. This includes a lot of behaviors, converters and utilities, including a lot of animation stuff.
• WpWinNl proper, which is dependent on WpWinNlBasic and does pull in MVVMLight.

So if you just want to continue using WpWinNl like you used to do, nothing much is going to happen apart from the fact that you pull in two NuGet packages in stead of one. But if you for some odd reason does not like MVVMLight, or don’t use it can now use all my stuff that does not rely on MVVMLight by pulling in WpWinNLBasic only. I have received several request to that end (most vocally by Dutch DPE Rajen Kishna), so there it is.

If you, by any chance, use WpWinNl on Universal apps or Windows app, you are pulling in a profound change under the hood. For those type of apps, all the code I have written so far is sitting inside a PCL, including the behaviors. To that end, I use my previously released version of IBehaviorPortable, that uses a trick to make it possible to write cross-platform behavior (as described here).

This is a pre-release version as I said, for the simple reason that there are a few known issues:

1. I am not entirely sure of the Bluetooth stuff. Although phone to phone seems to work, phone to PC does not, at least not under Windows Phone 8.1. I still have to get to the bottom of this
2. Not all behaviors and utilities made it from Windows Phone 8.0 to 8.1. This includes the behaviors to check for updates, reminding the user to review, and some stuff that Timmy Kokke contributed some 1.5 years ago.

As a bonus, I also released a third package, that allows you to bind polygons, lines, and the new MapIcons to the new Windows Phone 8.1 here maps control. You can find this package by looking for WpWinNlMaps, and it basically is an update to the principle I describe here for Windows Phone 8.0. No sample code yet folks – been a bit busy lately.

I am pretty sure this all works pretty well (barring the mentioned issues), but being a engineer, I don’t say it’s done until it’s really done. So, therefore – prerelease. Terms and conditions may apply. Your mileage may vary. And stuff like that.

If you discover any issues, run into trouble, or have suggestions to improve things - please feel free contact me.