Windows App Developer Links - 2012-04-12

posted on 12 Apr 2012 | App Developer Links

Visual Studio 11

  • Hidden Gems in Visual Studio 11 Beta - .NET Portable Class Libraries (Scott Hanselman)

    • "I'm realizing there's a number of subtle but important new things in the next version of VS that streamline some previously difficult tasks. ... Portable Class Libraries (PCLs) will generate a managed assembly that can be referenced by Windows Phone 7, Silverlight, the Microsoft .NET Framework and Xbox 360 platforms. This really helps to maximize reuse of code and reduce the number of projects in multi-targeted application solutions."

  • JavaScript Debugging Enhancements (Visual Studio Blog)

    • "Visual Studio 11 Beta introduces a first class JavaScript development experience and provides a rich toolset for developing Windows Metro style apps. Debugging is a crucial part of that toolset. In this post I am going to focus on just some of the new scenarios and enhancements we’ve added to JavaScript debugging experience for this release."

Metro App Development

  • Managing app lifecycle so your apps feel "always alive" (Windows 8 App Developer Blog)

    • "The app lifecycle model in Windows 8 means that users no longer need to manage which apps are running. It also makes it easy for developers to craft a great user experience that doesn’t affect the device’s battery or performance when the app is in the background. Using the new lifecycle events, your app will always feel alive, even though it never runs when it is off-screen."

  • Building Windows 8 Metro Apps using Windows Azure Service Bus (Channel 9)

    • "In this episode, we are joined by Abhishek Lal — Senior Program Manager for Windows Azure Service Bus — who shows us some enhancements to the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8. Abhishek discusses how developers can use service bus to handle a variety of messaging patterns and how those patterns can be used to build great Windows 8 Metro Apps."

  • WinJS Promises #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6 (Mike Taulty)

    • "I made a few short screencasts about promises in WinJS for Windows 8 Metro style apps. I know that promises are implemented in a bunch of frameworks but they were new to me and I spent a bit of time trying to figure them out as best I could and, generally, I’m very impressed. It’s a powerful and natural way to work with async code..."

  • Building Global Windows 8 Metro XAML Apps Part 1 - Localizing Strings (Yasser Makram)

    • "WinRT provides good support for building global aware applications especially when compared to classic Windows API , but has some limitations compared to WPF features. In this series of posts we will explore the provided features with some workarounds to the issues in the current release."

  • Building Global Windows 8 Metro XAML Apps Part 2 - Localizing Files and Custom Layouts (Yasser Makram)

    • "In the previous post we explored string localization for WinRT XAML applications. In this post the focus will be on localizing files like Images, Styles, and Custom Layouts."

  • Building Global Windows 8 Metro XAML Apps Part 3 - PRI Files Deep Dive (Yasser Makram)

    • "In Part 1 we explored localizing strings, and in Part 2 explored localizing images, styles and custom layouts. In this post we will dig deeper into PRI files. All resource metadata is compiled into binary PRI files using a tool called makepri.exe."

  • Metro app development hidden gem: anonymous type binding (Tim Heuer)

    • "Just a little post to point out a hidden gem if you are a .NET developer creating a Metro style app: you can bind to anonymous types. This came up in a discussion with a customer today that I was having and, frankly, I never tried it until then because my mind was back in Silverlight where this isn’t possible. There may not be a tone of cases where this is valuable for you, but knowing it is there may help."

  • Windows 8 - Icons (Shai Raiten)

    • "Everyone who starts developing for Windows 8 must have heard about the AppBar control... When you define a command for AppBar you can set a Icon for it and there is already a lot of icons available for you out of the box in any Metro app."

Apps & Code to Look At

  • Windows 8 Metro RSS Reader (Zubair Ahmed)

    • "A RSS Reader metro app for Windows 8 written in C# and XAML based on the sample Grid template."