There is a new drop of Prism v2.0 - Drop 4.
For the uninitiated, Prism ( aka Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight ) is Microsoft Patterns & Practices guidance for developing composite WPF and Silverlight Applications. This is much like how the Web Client Software Factory helps you build composite ASP.NET Web Applications and the Smart Client Software Factory helps you build composite smart client applications using Winforms.
According to the CodePlex Site, the following are included in this latest drop of Prism:
- The Project Linker tool installer
- The Multi-Targeting QuickStart
- The Multi-Targeting Visual Studio templates
- The Modularity QuickStart (Static and Remote module-loading versions)
- The Top Down Composition QuickStart (Work-in-progress at a very early stage)
- Composite Application Library for WPF
- Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight Work-in-progress documentation
- Initial port of the Modularity namespace for Composite Application Library for Silverlight
- Initial port of the Regions namespace for Composite Application Library for Silverlight
- Initial port of Composite.UnityExtensions for Silverlight
- Initial port of the Reference Implementation: Shell and PositionSummary module migrated
- Update CHM file with changes around Modularity Quickstart.
And major changes to Prism v2.0 Drop 4 are:
- Region namespace ported to Silverlight
- Top Down Composition QuickStart Added
- Work-in-progress version of the Reference Implementation for Silverlight added
- Acceptance tests for the Modularity QuickStarts are now working
- Acceptance tests added for the Project Linker tooling
- Added the following topics to the Work-in-progress documentation:
- Modularity QuickStarts topic
- Some How To topics on Modularity
I highlighted a couple of links above on "Top Down Composition". Erwin van der Valk has a nice write-up of the work done in this new drop with regard to how Views get injected into Regions. Previously Prism had what he considers "Bottom Up Composition", but now he says they added what he calls "Top Down Composition":
"With top down composition we took a different approach. Usually, developers are very comfortable with the usage of UserControls. It’s quite common for developers to split up a view into several UserControls to reduce complexity (divide and conquer) and to improve reuse of visual elements. Now it’s quite easy to create controls and place them in different assemblies. However, in order to use those assemblies, the shell has to have a reference to the assemblies that hold the user controls. This goes against the principles of modular development where modules can be versioned, and deployed seperately.
We wanted to allow a model where you can visually compose your application in the same way as using UserControls, but without sacrificing modularity. To do this, we introduced a Top Down composition model..."
Before downloading the latest drop of Prism 2.0 here, I recommend checking out Erwin's post.
Check out other Prism Tutorials and WPF Tutorials.