blendability

What is the standard convention for defining nested view:viewmodel mapping in MVVM Light

so in classic MVVM examples ive seen DataTemplate definitions are used to map up View Models to Views, what is the standard way to do this in MVVM Light framework, and where should the mappings be located? Following are examples of what I'm doing now and what I'm talking about, blendability is important to me! Main Window: <Window xml...

How to achieve "Blendability" when using DataServiceCollection in my ViewModel

I'm looking at using oData endpoints in my Silverlight client. Naturally, I'm doing MVVM and I want the project to be nice and "Blendable" (i.e. I must be able to cleanly use static data instead of the oData endpoints when in design mode.) Now to the problem. I'd like to use the DataServiceCollection in my ViewModels, since it allows fo...

Blendability: isn't it solved with d:DataContext? What am I missing?

I feel as though I still see a lot of guidance and advice stating that a view-first approach is the best way to go to get Blendability in your application. However, with d:DataContext, d:DesignData and d:DesignInstance, isn't the problem of Blendability easy to solve regardless of how your views and viewmodels are wired together? With D...

Silverlight ViewModelLocator defined in app.xaml needs a reference to the DI container

I have a ViewModelLocator class that I am defining in app.xaml which is used by my views to databind to the correct ViewModel. DataContext="{Binding HomeViewModel, Source={StaticResource Locator}}" I am using Prism and Unity and my ViewModelLocator class needs a reference to an application level unity container. I wanted inject the I...