Saturday, February 20, 2010

Magellan Major Changes

by Paul Stovell via Paul Stovell on 2/20/2010 6:42:47 AM

The latest CodePlex Magellan build includes a couple of changes that are worth noting:

1. The new Forms controls
2. No need to import the Magellan namespaces
3. Various bug fixes

That second item is worth focusing on. In previous builds, to use any of the Magellan classes in XAML, you had to write:

<Page ...
    xmlns:magellan="http://xamlforge.com/magellan"
    >
    <magellan:Layout...

I wrote before about an idea to move them to the default XAML namespace, and while a few potential issues were suggested, I thought the benefits outweighed the issues. This means you can now do this:

<Page ...
    <Layout ...

With the new Forms feature combined with the Shared Layouts feature, the markup gets really minimal:

<Page ...>
    <Layout>
        <Zone ZonePlaceHolderName="Content">
            <Form>
                <Field For="{Binding FirstName}" />
                <Field For="{Binding LastName}" />
                <Field For="{Binding EmailAddress}" />
            </Form>
        </Zone>
        <Zone ZonePlaceHolderName="Actions">
            <Button Content="Submit" Command="{Binding Submit}" />
        </Zone>
    </Layout>
</Page>

If you do encounter any issues because of this change, please let me know.