Implementing a busy indicator using a visual overlay in MVVM

This is a technique we use at work to lock the UI whilst some long running process is happening - preventing the user clicking on stuff whilst it's retrieving or rendering data. Now we could have done this by launching a child dialog window but that feels rather out of date and clumsy, we wanted a more modern pattern similar to the way <div> overlays are done on the web.Imagine we have the following simple WPF app and when 'Click' is pressed...

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Comparing performance of .Net 4.5 to .Net 4.0 for WPF

Currently I'm working on a .Net 4.0 WPF app and we've had some discussion about moving to .Net 4.5, we don't get to make the decision :( but we're interested to know what performance gain we'd get.What follows is a comparison of the same app compiled against .Net 4.0 & 4.5. The app makes use of a couple of NuGet packages - Autofac & Reactive Extensions, both of which provide versions for both .Net 4.0 & 4.5. It also makes use of Telerik...

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Measuring UI freeze in WPF applications with Reactive Extensions

Making sure an application doesn't freeze the UI is probably one of the most important concerns when building an application. UI freeze can be broken down into two categories,firstly long running background tasks and secondly the rendering of UI elements (controls) to the screen.The second situation is what interests me with this post, usually UI based applications will dedicate a single thread to rendering the UI (dispatcher). This thread in theory...

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