Windows App Developer Links - 2012-06-22

posted on 21 Jun 2012 | App Developer Links

Visual Studio 2012

  • Visual Studio 2012 New Features: Solution Explorer (Zain Naboulsi)

    • "I love the title of this one because I'm sure someone will read this and wonder why I think Solution Explorer is a "new" feature. I mean, haven't we had this sucker for a billion years? Aren't there cave drawings in France about this feature? So why is it "new"? Let me show you!"

Metro App Development

  • Developing a Windows 8 Metro App Part 3: Metro Design (Jennifer Marsman)

    • "Microsoft has a design language which is codenamed "Metro". If you are wondering about the origin of the codename, let me tell you a true story ... This is where the name "Metro" came from. Think about the signage commonly used in public transport systems (like a Metro transit system). It is very simple and clear, with heavy use of iconography and clean typography to convey information. Even someone who doesn't know the native language can figure out what to do. And that's exactly how our experience with computers should be."

  • Mixing themes in XAML Metro apps (Andrei Marukovich)

    • "For Metro-style apps created using XAML, Windows 8 SDK provides three predefined themes - light, dark and high contrast. Two of three themes - light and dark - can be selected programmatically by assigning Application.RequestedTheme property... High contrast theme automatically activated by Windows once corresponding option is selected in Control Panel. Predefined themes provide look and feel for standard controls only but if you have some custom controls you can extend themes..."

  • Windows 8: 15 More Reasons why I choose XAML over HTML5 (Jerry Nixon)

    • "Metro developers building applications for Windows 8 have choices to make. A few weeks ago, I put together my top ten reasons I choose XAML. That really got me thinking. There are so many more than 10 good reasons why I prefer XAML. I thought I would continue the list."

  • Consuming ASP.NET Web API in a Metro Style Application using jQuery (Mahesh Sabnis)

    • "Microsoft has provided the developer community with a brand new execution environment and a collection of new APIs called WinRT to develop UI rich full screen applications known as Metro-Style Applications. ... Since HTML5 based is used for developing UI and jQuery can be used to make external calls to WCF services and Web API, we can easily develop business applications for those users who are just interested in using applications for business use than an application developed using a specific technology. In the application, we will talk about establishing communications between ASP.NET WEB API and Metro-Style application using jQuery for performing CRUD operations..."

  • Using UDP sockets to connect a Windows 8 Metro style app to a .NET Micro Framework device: Part 1 (Pete Brown)

    • "One of my pet projects requires using UDP sockets from a Windows 8 Metro style app to talk to a microcontroller. UDP sockets are a pretty efficient way of communicating across wired and wireless connections. In this first part, we'll focus on prototyping the Metro style XAML/C# app. The NETMF piece will be in the next post."

  • Video: The Top 10, er, 11 Features Developers will Love about Windows 8 (Jeremy Likness)

    • "I downloaded the Developer Preview for Windows 8 within minutes of it being announced during the major //BUILD conference in September 2011. Since then, I've been working with Windows 8 on both a laptop and a slate and have come to love several features. I wrote about the top 10 features I think developers will love in this article and have developed this into a talk. ... In this presentation I elaborated on those features as well as an 11th (you may recall my earlier series on the Portable Class Library). This presentation was done entirely on a Samsung Series 7 slate, including the live coding examples..."

Apps & Code to Look At

  • 2012-June-11 - Release 3.7.13 (SQLite)

    • "SQLite version 3.7.13 adds support for WinRT and metro style applications for Microsoft Windows 8. The 3.7.13 release is coming sooner than is usual after the previous release in order to get this new capability into the hands of developers. ... Because of the increased application security and safety requirements of WinRT, all database filenames should be full pathnames. Note that SQLite is not capable of accessing databases outside the installation directory and application data directory. This restriction is another security and safety feature of WinRT. Apart from these restrictions, SQLite should work exactly the same on WinRT as it does on every other system..."

  • Reactive Extensions v2.0 Release Candidate available now! (Reactive Extensions Team Blog)

    • "Three months after the release of Reactive Extensions v2.0 Beta, we're happy to announce the availability of our next milestone build for the Rx v2.0 product cycle! Today, we released the Release Candidate (RC) build to the Download Center and NuGet, ready for you to start playing around. This post will highlight important things you should know to get started, and provide some in-depth information on what's new and changed. We did do a ton of work to improve various aspects of the technology, and hope you'll like it!"