New project buzz
Starting a new project can be a little daunting but is usually exciting. I have a little application that would be useful to me, so I'm going to use that as a dive into Silverlight. The daunting part for me is that I've grown to be familiar and comfortable in Windows Forms so it'll be good to get into something different. And WPF just seems huge! So I feel a little happier starting in the smaller Silverlight world.
MVVM Framework
It was really triggered by a conversation on Herding Code with Rob Eisenberg from the Caliburn.Micro framework. This was a interesting show and so I decided to download and try out the framework. I also had a quick look at MVVM Light, but the download didn't have any samples, which made trying it out using my netbook on the train without any internet connection a little tricky! I did go back and look at the documentation on the website, but decided to go with Caliburn.Micro for now.
The Application
It should be relatively simple, but the idea of the application is to be a small media player. Initially, it'll simply support downloading of mp3 files and then auto-playing them once. The plan is to then support RSS/Atom feeds so I can just add a subscription to a podcast feed for example and the application will auto download and play each episode as it's published.
Further out I'm thinking of incorporating a YouTube feature that would allow downloading of a video for viewing offline (as mentioned, on my train journey I don't have an internet connection, so this would come in handy occasionally).
Next time we'll see how I'm getting to grips (or not!) with Silverlight and Caliburn.Micro.
