Windows App Developer Links - 2012-08-01

posted on 31 Jul 2012 | App Developer Links

Metro App Development

  • Windows 8 Metro Apps: The 8 Must-Know Tricks! Day 4 (Samidip Basu)

    • "Day 4: Controls & Styling. Content over chrome - one of the cornerstones of Metro design principles and very important to keep in mind as we design our Metro apps for Windows 8. Our UI should showcase content, minimize distractions & provide the user with the right hints to explore the app. One of the most important aspects of providing consistent & compelling UX are the controls that we put on our app canvas. It makes up for the very language that the end user uses to communicate with our app - pivotal, needless to say. So let's explore our options on the XAML stack..."

  • Windows 8 Metro: Add settings to your application (Andrea Boschin)

    • "Almost every application you write needs to expose an user interface that let the user change the configuration. In common desktop applications these settings go under a preferences section, usually available from a menu item, but for sure it is not true for all the applications, so every time you install a new software you have to rely on a manual and search a place where this configuration has been placed..."

  • Traversing the One-To-Many Relationship of WinRT Streams (Nathan Winder)

    • "WinRT exposes a host of new APIs and with them changes to one of the most fundamental types: the stream. These changes improve .Net"s stream API. Before accessing a Stream in .Net you must check its capabilities using CanRead/CanWrite. In WinRT the read/write capabilities of a stream are implied by its type. IInputStream and IOutputstream define read and write streams respectively, IRandomAccessStream supports both read and write, and IBuffer is an in memory byte buffer..."

  • Creating A Sticky AppBar in Win8 (Jesse Liberty)

    • "In talking with other developers, there seems to be a growing fear that creating an AppBar for Windows 8 is somehow difficult or complex. Nothing could be further from true; creating an AppBar is quite straight forward. To illustrate this, I've created an application that creates a simple app bar and adds a ToggleSwitch to turn on and off the IsSticky attribute. When IsSticky is off (the default) you can dismiss the AppBar by clicking anywhere in the application off the AppBar. When IsSticky is set to true, however, you must make the same gesture you made to get the AppBar to appear (swiping from top down or bottom up) to make it disappear..."

Tools, Frameworks, & Libraries

  • AdDuplex for Windows 8 is here! (Alan Mendelevich)

    • "AdDuplex, the largest cross promotion network for Windows Phone apps, has launched the first cross promotion network for Windows 8. Starting today developers of Windows 8 apps can help each other get more exposure for their apps for free by participating in the AdDuplex ad exchange program. At this time only the managed XAML/C#/VB metro-style apps are supported, but support for other app types is coming..."

Free Training Materials

  • New Windows 8 How-Do-I Videos Released (G. Andrew Duthie)

    • "I'm pleased to announce that a new series of short videos, called "How Do I?" created by your local Microsoft Technical Evangelists has been posted to Channel 9. Contributors include Jeff Barnes, Jeremy Foster, David Isbitski, and of course yours truly. Running between 8 and 15 minutes, these videos are intended to give you solid technical information on a specific topic in Windows 8 development, with no fluff, plenty of code examples, and kept short enough that you can easily fit them into your busy schedule..."

Office 2013

  • Office and SkyDrive for Windows (Office Next)

    • "In one of our initial posts we discussed our efforts to connect Office more naturally to the cloud. This week we'll elaborate on our services approach in the next Office, starting with today's post about Office and SkyDrive integration. Daniel Fiordalis, Program Manager, and Arnab Bose, Senior Program Manager Lead join Office Next to discuss this area in detail..."

  • Introducing Outlook.com - Modern Email for the Next Billion Mailboxes (Outlook Blog)

    • "Recently, we talked about how we've reimagined cloud services for Windows 8 and Windows Phone. And we described new apps for Windows 8, updates to SkyDrive, and how cloud services power the new Office Preview, We've also been hard at work on a mission to reimagine personal email - from the datacenter all the way to the user experience. Today, we're starting to deliver on that goal with a preview of the new Outlook.com - modern email designed for the next billion mailboxes...."