Windows App Developer Links - 2012-07-09

posted on 08 Jul 2012 | App Developer Links

Expression Blend

  • Running User Code in the Xaml Designer: Blend and Vs 2012 (Microsoft Expression Blend Team Blog)

    • "The XAML designer in Blend & VS is a projection of a running application (see Mysteries of XDesProc-Revealed!), but unlike a full-fledged app, usage of certain programming constructs and resources might cause the designer to crash or behave in an unexpected manner. Note: This post and the examples shown are written in the context of the XAML Metro style app designer, but some of them apply to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Silverlight, and Windows Phone designers as well..."

Metro App Development

  • Targeting Multiple Platforms with Portable Code: Overview (.NET Framework Blog)

    • "As programming with .NET has become prevalent on all Microsoft platforms, targeting multiple platforms at once becomes a critical desire amongst developers. In fact, we see the future of library development moving to supporting an intersection of platforms rather than targeting just one version of the .NET Framework at a time. Mircea Trofin, a program manager from the .NET Core Framework team, wrote the following article to introduce how to do this..."

  • Forcing Metro Apps to terminate (Christophe Nasarre)

    • "As explained in Reclaiming memory from Metro style apps, Windows 8 optimizes the way RAM is dedicated to running processes. Metro Apps are even more impacted than just reclaiming memory from their working set because the system can decide to simply terminate the suspended ones when low memory conditions are detected. It is important to take care of this scenario when you write your code so the user, who is unaware of the App termination expects to get back where he was when he clicks on its tile: this is part of the PLM (= Process Lifecycle Management) and I'll spend some time describing the basics before returning to the hidden termination case..."

  • Windows 8 HTML5 Metro Style App: RSS reader in 30min - building your WordPress version (David Rousset)

    • "I got nice feedbacks on my 2 previous small tutorials ... but many of you sent me emails or messages on Twitter to know how to plug the tutorials on a WordPress blog. So let me show you how to do that in 5 minutes rather than giving you directly the code. You'll need of course to read the 2 previous tutorials before going through this one. What's more, please note again that the below details won't be enough to make a great Windows 8 App ready for the store. That's why also, I will continue this series in the next weeks to show you how to add the navigation framework, a splash screen, the snap view, etc..."

  • Reflection in WinRT: DeclaredProperties vs GetRuntimeProperties Caveat (Joost Van Schaik)

    • "I suppose this is part of some FM I did not R, but I would like to point it out in case some other sod wastes just as much time on it as me. I embarked upon a journey to port SilverlightSerializer and some behaviors to WinRT. All stuff is heavily making use of reflection. Now reflection has been hugely overhauled in WinRT, so I knew I was in for an interesting ride. Recently I was convinced I managed to do it, but it turned out I did not. There are apparently two ways to use reflection in RT..."

  • How to create a header menu navigation in a Windows 8 Metro-style app (Karl Ots)

    • "Currently (as of Release Preview) there is no out-of-the-box solution or SDK-provided control for creating the header menu in a Windows 8 Metro app. In this post I'll demonstrate a quick and easy way to build one..."

  • Converting StorageFiles (png) to a Byte[] in order to display as an Image in WinRT (C#) (Derik Whittaker)

    • "When you are building Metro Applications it will be very common that your application will have image (.png) files stored in local isolated storage and that you will want to show these images to the users inside your application. In this post i am going to walk you though how to access these stored files and how to show them inside your XAML application..."

  • How to create a trial version of your app (Windows Dev Center)

    • "If customers can use your app for free during a trial period, you can design your app to exclude or limit some features during the trial period. You can also enable features, such as banners or watermarks, that are shown only during the trial, before a customer buys your app. Let's look at how to add this to your app..."

  • Launch Maps from Any Metro App, Windows 8 (DreamTeam Experience)

    • "Ideally, would be great if there exists same task as on Windows Phone. Some kind of Map Launch application. I tried searching, but nothing found. Some people were pointing to Bing Maps SDK for Metro apps, but this would end in adding dedicated page with map control and duplicating most functionality of Maps app. I don't understand why I (and every other developer) should spend time in writing it's own Maps app. Other people suggest using protocol activation feature. This is customizable and powerful feature allowing communicating between different apps. Only issue with protocol activation is that it's unclear which protocol should I activate to run Maps app and how to send there exact location I need to view. Now I'd like to share my solution..."

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