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c#wpfmvvmexpression-blend
JimDel
JimDel

Reputation: 4359

Is MVVM an alternative to Expression Blend?

I'm sure this is a Noob question, but I've never worked with WPF before. Is MVVM an alternative to Expression Blend?

Upvotes: 9

Views: 1775

Answers (3)

Scott Whitlock
Scott Whitlock

Reputation: 13839

No, not at all. In fact, MVVM is supposed to be a way to help a designer using Expression Blend work with the developer writing the functionality. The idea is that MVVM provides better separation between the View and the ViewModel. This gives you some advantages:

  • You can replace the real ViewModel with a mock ViewModel (XML based, perhaps) which allows the designer to have some data to play with inside of Blend.
  • You can write unit tests for your ViewModel which (hopefully) includes all your functionality. The unit test becomes another consumer of your ViewModel, just as the View is.

Upvotes: 4

Reed Copsey
Reed Copsey

Reputation: 564333

No. They are completely different concepts.

Expression Blend is software for creating interfaces - it's a designer's tool for working with WPF.

MVVM is a design pattern - it's an architecture you can use to make your WPF application clean and easily maintainable.

You are perfectly capable of using Blend together with MVVM - in fact, this is one of the benefits MVVM provides (it makes it very easy to keep the UI design separate from the programming).

Upvotes: 9

Robert Fraser
Robert Fraser

Reputation: 10917

No; MVVM is a design pattern while Expression Blend is a program. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MVVM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expression_Blend http://www.google.com/

Blend actually creates code that can be used as MVVM

Upvotes: 4

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