This blog certainly is not intended to be a reposting platform for yours truly, but I can't not mention a new tool (source code included) that allows you to inspect the visual tree of any Avalon application and even let's you see events and databinding!

It should prove to be an incredible help while debugging/learning/profiling your WPF applications. Get snoop here, and never look back again

An article has just been published on code project by Josh Smith that should not escape your attention: Piping value converters in WPF.

Basically, he has written a simple class that will allow you to define a group of converters and use it during databinding like so:
    <local:ValueConverterGroup x:Key="statusForegroundGroup">
      <local:IntegerStringToProcessingStateConverter  />
      <local:ProcessingStateToColorConverter />
      <local:ColorToSolidColorBrushConverter />
    </local:ValueConverterGroup>

and then use it like so:

        <TextBlock
          Text="{Binding XPath=@Status,
                 Converter={StaticResource statusDisplayNameGroup}}"
          Foreground="{Binding XPath=@Status,
                       Converter={StaticResource statusForegroundGroup}}" />

This should prove very valuable indeed!

A small tip today on how to access elements that are embedded within a control template. In my case for an itemscontrol class.
Consider the following Xaml:

Just a little tip, showcasing the power of Xaml and the efficiency of good code/design separation.

When you are fetching data from a server, you could (and actually should) use the DataModel-View-ViewModel pattern, as described by Dan Crevier from the Microsoft Max team. It uses a viewmodel-class to bind your Xaml against. Dan then implements a 'state' property to indicate whether the model is finished fetching and is in a 'bindable' state.

If you are short on time, or have other reasons not to implement such a strategy, you are probably binding straight to objects that are still Null during the fetch-action.
In either case, it would be nice to let the user know that data is being fetched.

In my case, I had a lot of <TabItem>'s that are being filled with data, one-by-one, by setting the datacontext directly. While designing the user interface, I do not want to have to think about the possibility of binding against an invalid object (it being null). So I created a style, that I put in the application resources. The style replaces my content-template with a temporary template, whilst in invalid state. I was extremely satisfied with the solution, because it was so dead-easy, and it works like a charm.

Here is the code (don't mock my visually stunning border please ):

I was pleasantly surprised by the simplicity of the code. The DataContext is used in a trigger to set the content-template.