Windows App Developer Links - 2012-05-22

posted on 21 May 2012 | App Developer Links

Windows 8

  • Enhancing Windows 8 for multiple monitors (Building Windows 8 Blog)

    • "This post goes into the details around the multi-monitor experience for Windows 8. From the very first public release and demonstrations of Windows 8 we have shown improvements over Windows 7 for multi-monitor scenarios and have shown how we support new Metro style apps within a multi-monitor environment. We have continued to develop and refine features for multiple monitors and have significantly enhanced the experience as we move to our next milestone, the Release Preview. This post provides a bit of a preview of work that was not yet complete at the Consumer Preview, and serves as a reminder that the Developer Preview and Consumer Preview were works in progress. Mark Yalovsky, a lead program manager on our User Experience team, authored this post. (Note: This post is unchanged from last week when it was inadvertently posted as noted on @buildwindows8.)"

Metro App Development

  • Creating a fast and fluid app launch experience (Windows 8 app developer blog)

    • "App launch is a principal part of the fast and fluid Windows 8 experience, so it's important that you prioritize your app's launch UX. A highly-polished launch flow is sure to improve the initial reception of any app. In this post, I'll discuss how to craft a well-designed, responsive app launch experience and explain why app launch is a critical time to make a positive impression on users. I'll introduce four app launch design patterns that can be applied to your apps and point out some key things to keep in mind as you continue building Metro style apps."
  • Windows 8 Metro: Something about application life-cycle (Andrea Boschin)

    • "If currently you are probably running Windows 8 on a virtual machine or luckily on a computer, there is not any doubt that this new operating system and especially the metro-style interface is dedicated to touch enabled devices like tablets. The plans of Microsoft infact include the new WOA keywork where the acronym stands for Windows On ARM that is the aim of making available this interface on a wide set of mobile devices that currently embrace this successful processor architecture. Running on a tablet does not only imply a different input interface like the touch screen, but also it requires a careful use of system resources that are not always large on this kind of device. This is the reason why metro-style applications have an application lifecycle that is mostly similar to the Windows Phone than of classical desktop apps."
  • How to cook a complete Windows 8 application with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript in a week - Day 4 (David Catuhe)

    • "This is the final part of our series. Actually, I will post a last article when the Release Preview will be available to give you the updated version but you can consider this version as feature full. And as usual the complete solution is available here: http://www.catuhe.com/msdn/urza/day4.zip During this article you will discover how you can use Skydrive (via the Live SDK: Download the Live SDK) to save the collection's state of your user. The entire collection list is downloaded on a site as a json file (cf. Day 0). The collection's state will be saved in another json file so the cards list can evolve without impacting the collection's state. This json file will be saved to the user's SkyDrive."
  • Porting a simple Silverlight game loop to Windows 8 Metro style (Jim Blizzard)

    • "The other evening I went on the hunt for a XAML/C#-based example of a game loop. I ran into a couple of OLD blog posts by Mike Snow. Naturally it caught my eye, simply because of his last name. In his posts he described game loop based on Silverlight 2. OK. Silverlight uses XAML, and the code was C#. XAML/C# are first-class citizens in the Windows 8 Metro style app world, so I figured, why not see what it takes to make this work on Windows 8?"
  • Hacking for fun: porting a Silverlight Windows Phone app to WinRT in 9hours (Jeremy Alles)

    • "Today I woke up and took a look outside: the weather was so awful I decided to so something cool, at home. Today, I ported a Silverlight Windows Phone 7 game to WinRT in 9 hours. In this post, I share the "journal" I wrote will porting the app so that you can follow this process with many detail. I hope you will learn interesting stuff. Warning: the post is much longer than usual..."
  • Metro: Creating a Master/Detail View with a WinJS ListView Control (Stephen Walther)

    • "The goal of this blog entry is to explain how you can create a simple master/detail view by using the WinJS ListView and Template controls. In particular, I explain how you can use a ListView control to display a list of movies and how you can use a Template control to display the details of the selected movie."
  • [Windows 8] How to load a file marked as Content ? (Thomas LEBRUN)

    • "Most of the sample/blog posts that you can found on Internet show you how to load a file that is contained in local storage. But what do you need to do if you want to access a file that is marked as "Content" in Visual Studio? The trick is to access to the files/folder are installed with your application. And to do this, you need to use Windows.ApplicationModel.Package.Current.InstalledLocation..."

Other

  • Introducing GitHub For Windows (Phil Haack)

    • "For the past several months I've been working on a project with my amazing cohorts, Paul, Tim, and Adam, and Cameron at GitHub. I've had the joy of learning new technologies and digging deep into the inner workings of Git while lovingly crafting code. But today, is a good day. We've called the shipit squirrel into action once again! We all know that the stork delivers babies and the squirrel delivers software. In our case, we are shipping GitHub For Windows! Check out the official announcement on the GitHub Blog. GitHub for Windows is the easiest and best way to get Git on your Windows box."
  • GitHub for Windows (Tim Clem)

    • "Ever wish there was an easy way to get up and running with Git and GitHub on your Windows computer? Turned off by command line utilities and setting up SSH keys? Want to join the incredible world of open and closed source collaboration that happens on GitHub.com every day? Today we are releasing GitHub for Windows which is available immediately as a free download."