Windows App Developer Links - 2012-06-18

posted on 17 Jun 2012 | App Developer Links

Windows 8

  • Designing the Windows 8 Calendar app (Building Windows 8 Blog)

    • "This post builds on the Mail app and People app posts, and details the Calendar app. We've worked hard to integrate these apps together into a seamless communication suite that connects to the cloud services most important to you. This post details the integration with Windows 8, some of the features in the current preview, and features on the way. We also look at a little bit of the design history and iteration as some background. Colin Anthony, a lead program manager on the Windows Live team, authored this post."

Metro App Development

  • How to cook a complete Windows 8 application with HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript in a week - Day 5 (David Catuhe)

    • "The new navigator.js. The first point is about the navigator.js file where I added some cool new things. First of all I added animations during navigation process. I also added a new function in the pages called afterPageEnter. This function is called when the enterPage animation is played. This allows your code to be launched when everything is ready. But it also allows your animations to get all the power in order to keep them fluid even on small computers..."

  • W8WIL #3: Timers using setTimeout in a Windows 8 app (G. Andrew Duthie)

    • "In this, the third, post in my series "Windows 8: What I've learned," I'll share how the behavior of script loading and unloading in some Windows 8 Metro app templates require a different approach to using setTimeout for timers."

  • Easily use Yahoo!'s Local Search REST API in your Metro App (Jerry Nixon)

    • "Bing, Google, Yahoo. They all have a series of APIs you can call to use their services in your Metro application. one of the more compelling services is Yahoo!'s Local Search API which allows you to find local businesses based on latitude and longitude..."

  • Easily use Yahoo!'s Geocode Service in your Metro App (Jerry Nixon)

    • "If you want to interact with a map, you will likely need latitude and longitude, not the string like "Denver, CO". In order to convert a string into lat/long you need a geocoding service. You might also have an address, like "123 Main Street", and want to validate the address or standardize the address in your application. To do that, you need a geocoding service..."

  • Adventures in Windows 8: Taking a Closer Look at WinJS.xhr (Frank La Vigne)

    • "Yesterday, I blogged a little bit about the WinJS.xhr object. You may be wondering what that object is and what makes it so special. WinJS is a JavaScript library that provides the "glue" that connects the HTML/JavasScript world to WinRT. Since it's just JavaScript, we can take a look at the source code quite easily. This is a great way to learn the unobtrusive style of JavaScript that's all the rage right now. (and makes the language less awful). Looking Under the Hood..."

  • Investigating BCL differences between .NET and Metro/WinRT (iinspectable)

    • "In the previous post, I've explained how to use WinRT APIs from a .NET Desktop application to list the installed Metro App packages. This post is dedicated to the other side of the story: what part of the Microsoft .NET Base Class Library is usable from a C# Metro App. Where are my assemblies?..."

  • Closing Streams in WinRT (Damir Arh)

    • "File IO in .NET for Metro style apps (aka .NET Core) can be a challenge for seasoned .NET developers. The classes in Windows.Storage namespace are different from both System.IO.IsolatedStorage and System.IO and require some getting used to. On top of that even the remaining classes in System.IO are missing some of properties and methods. One such method is Stream.Close() (notice the remark at the top of the linked page). This doesn't mean that you can forget about closing or disposing streams once you're done with them, though. Try calling the following piece of code twice in a row and you'll see what I mean..."

  • WinRT: Application Themes-How to Switch Between Dark and Light Theme (Mikael Koskinen)

    • "The Windows Phone OS has a global Theme setting available for the user to change. This one setting affects every application. The Windows 8 seems to take a different approach (at least in Windows 8 RP): There's no global theme setting, instead it's up to the developer to decide if her application uses the dark or the light theme..."

  • WinRT Gotcha: Periodic Live Tile Updates from the App doesn't set Content-Type Header to XML for the HTTP Request (Mikael Koskinen)

    • "One small tip if you're creating a Windows 8 Metro app and want to update the live tile periodically using the TileUpdater-class: The request made by the OS for the live tile update doesn't set the Content-Type so make sure that you backend is actually returning XML by default..."

Other

  • TechEd North America 2012 (Channel 9)

    • Most of the Tech Ed 2012 sessions are now available to watch on online via the Channel 9 website.