| layout | title | permalink | description | date | tags |
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post |
MvvmForms Readme |
new-page.html |
Readme for Mvvm Forms |
2015-05-17 16:31:30 -0700 |
MVVM; Windows Forms |
Welcome to ActiveDevelop's MvvmForms Library Project. MvvmForm's purpose is to provide XAML ViewModel compatible support for Windows Forms Visual Basic and CSharp Projects and Solutions including a full-blown WinForms Designer support. MvvmForms is Open Source (GPL), but Dual Licence. For more Information about MvvmForms licencing read the Licence section below.
Good one. If you have the luxury of a clean start for your new project, and your development team is up to the task, you most probable do not need MvvmForms. But that is seldom the case. In many cases, during the time between 1996 and 2010, hundreds of millions of lines of code have been written for the Windows platform, and often in CSharp and Visual Basic .NET for Windows Forms, or even with Visual Basic 6. Many companies don't have the means of throwing those projects away and start from scratch. And what for, anyway? Your solution works, it is stable and tested. So, why not continue using it?
MvvmForms is for your, if your want to change your development paradigm for the Front End of your LOB Application to migrate to a modern world without the risk, where there is Cloud First, Mobile First and the need to reuse big parts of your Windows Forms monolithic Application on tablets and phones.
Our company, located in Westphalia Germany, has specialized in migrating from a typical Windows Forms Code Behind paradigm to a modern architecture. And we help to do this in a feasible way. We know, your team does neither have the time nor the budget to start from scratch, and that is the reason we developed MvvmForms: To help our customers to enter the new world of software development without jeopardizing the project.
MvvmForms is a collection of controls for Windows Forms. Originally, it was designed to speed up the development process for data-heavy forms, and to address the need for database backends with their typical scenarios like zero-effort-handling of DBNulls, dirty-state handling of forms, focus highlighting, processing of formulas in numeric data entry fields, multi-threaded/multi-column lookup popups for collections up to 100.000 items, and much more. Sometime in mid 2012, a couple of German companies approached us to find a way to keep their existing Windows Forms design, yet they wanted to be able to apply the Mvvm pattern for parts of their LOB applications, so they could reuse this code in mobile apps and for other purposes. That was the start for MvvmForms, and we developed it from the existing toolset. This worked exceptional well, so we continued this approach and added rich designer functionality for the Mvvm components.
Because of this history, MvvmForms actually addresses two Windows Forms requirements. The first is to simplify designing data-heavy forms by providing controls like NullableDateValue, NullableNumValue, NullableTextValue, controls for DirtyState handling in Forms and so on.
The second one is to enable a Windows Forms for Mvvm. For this to end, you do not need to use one of the controls MvvmForms provide, you just need one component.: the MvvmManager component. Basically, just drag that component into your form, set its DataContextType property to the type of the ViewModel, you want to bind, and every control on that form will get a PropertyBindings property which allow your to bind against the corresponding ViewModel property. You just need to set the DataContext property of the MvvmManager Component at runtime. You'll find a short step-by-step guide for getting started, read the wiki - the links is here on the right side.
Oh, yes! Our team at ActiveDevelop is taking care of MvvmForms on a daily bases, because a couple of big projects in Germany rely on MvvmForms - some bigger than 1 Million lines of code. Since we are a German company, and we're only recently started to localize MvvmForms to English, there are sill a lot of German comments and XML-Docu-Tags inside the source - but we're working on it. Still, MvvmForms is ready to be used, it is stable, reliable, thoroughly tested, and if you need special support or want to start with it urgently and need us to customize, localize or extend its functionality, than simply talk to us, so we can find a way to make this happen.
WRONG! A third of our current projects are in CSharp, and parts of MvvmForms (the Mvvm Base Library for example) are in CSharp, as well. So, as long as you do Windows Forms, your good to go - the language doesn't matter,
Yes, for open source projects. For propriety, commercial projects, it's not. But it's also not expensive. Our primary goal is to find new opportunities to help with our 25+ year expertise in designing LOB Applications, and especially to show a way for our customers to migrate their software from being a big, monolithic Win32-Software to a modern approach without any risk, where they can go forward with cloud computing, Windows 10, Mobile Apps, and all that without redoing everything from scratch.
So, if you want us to help you with your existing Application by doing workshops, helping with designing a new architecture, finding a feasible migration concept, introducing Scrum to your team, or providing human ressources for a limited period of time for the purpose of the migration, we bring MvvmForms along. Then it's free for you, because your our customer. If you, however, do not want us, but you want the toolset, we'll come up with a pricing model soon. If you want it now, talk to us or write a mail to [email protected].
If you're maintaining an open source project under GPL, and you want to use it. Go ahead: Fork it, change it modify it, and sell it along with your Open Source App. That's Open Source! As long your Application which links to it, or uses classes which derive from MvvmForms is also GPL, that is perfectly OK. But, if you're managing a propriety close source solution, and you want to use (link to, derive from) MvvmForms, you have to obtain one license per active developer.
Oh, and as long as it is in Beta - it's free, and you got a GoLive licence!
Yes, but not yet. We do not have the infrastructure in place, so we cannot provide you yet with a valid Contributer Agreement, but we're working on it. If you're in a hurry, again, just talk to us, and we'll find a way to get you started.