Windows App Developer Links - 2012-08-20

posted on 20 Aug 2012 | App Developer Links

Windows 8 App Development

  • Windows 8 & Data Binding. Part 4-Data Conversion (Jesse Liberty)

    • "In Part 3 of this little mini-series on data binding in Windows 8 we looked at Element Binding. Today, we'll take a look at Data Conversion. At times the data in your business object (the source for your binding) and the target UIElement may not have an exact type match. For example, if your Employee class wants to keep track of the start date for each Employee, a sensible way to do so is with a DateTime object. However, when we display that data we'll want to use a Text object, and we may not want the entire default conversion of a DateTime to a string..."

  • New in Windows 8 RTM: out of the box implementation of in-app type-to-search feature (Andrei Marukovich)

    • "Search is one of the key features of Windows 8 and can be invoked at any time using Search charm. Additionally, Start screen behaves similar to Windows 7 Start menu and starts searching when user typed something. Like in Windows 7, you can press Windows key, type something and the search results will immediately appear on the screen. It's a nice feature and some apps can benefit from this approach too. While you can implement type-to-search scenario in your app by yourself (by catching KeyPress and invoking Search pane), Windows 8 RTM provides standard implementation for this scenario..."

  • Windows 8 App Bar Icons (from Segoe UI) (Jeremy Foster)

    • "This is a reference post. Come back when you, like me, forget which icons are available to use on your application bar in your Windows 8 app. A larger version is attached here..."

  • Getting Windows Device Info (Jeremy Foster)

    • "I have plenty of experience in the C# space with accessing Windows API, but I'm still finding it rather novel and delightful to do the same thing in JavaScript. The fact that I can do something like ... is just slick. That's all. There's no interop'ing, no dll loading, no service calls. WinRT just delivers it to my front door and doesn't even make me sign..."

  • [Windows 8] How to download files from FTP? (Thomas LEBRUN)

    • "Downloading files is a common scenario, specially in connected apps like you can find in Windows 8. When these files are hosted in Web server, downloads is really easy to perform using a WebRequest (C#) or XHR (XmlHttpRequest, in JS). But when the files are located on FTP server, it's a bit more complicated so we have to find a way to be able to download files. The answer to this problem is to use the BackgroundDownloader class..."

  • Windows Store-apps: WinRT XAML vs. Silverlight XAML (Thomas Claudius Huber)

    • "This post is part of a series about creating Windows Store-apps with XAML and C#. ... Last weekend I've finished the XAML-chapter of my upcoming book about developing Windows Store-apps with XAML and C#. I want to share the things that you should know about the WinRT XAML - the way I call it here - if you're familiar with Silverlight or WPF. The WinRT XAML is much like the XAML we know from Silverlight. But there are some differences in WinRT XAML..."

  • Common error when upgrading Windows 8 Apps from VS2012 RC to RTM (Michael Crump)

    • "I've been upgrading some of my applications from VS2012 RC to RTM and have encountered the following error multiple times. ... As you can see from the screenshot, the Package.appxmanifest just needs a quick update. Unfortunately, you cannot change these values through the User Interface. You can fix this easily by right-clicking on the Package.appxmanifest and opening it with an XML editor like shown below..."

  • Hot new Windows 8 content hits Channel 9 (Channel 9)

    • "So Windows 8 has hit MSDN Subscriber downloads (along with Visual Studio 2012) and Channel 9 has the content you need to get going right away. Check out the great new sessions in a Windows 8 Developer Camp published today, including this introductory session by John Lam. Interested in getting better at using Windows 8? Then check out a new series called Windows 8 Tips, with a short video on keyboard shortcuts as its premier episode!..."

Tools, Frameworks, & Libraries

  • Obelisk - WP7 & Windows 8 MVVM Persistence Library (CodePlex)

    • "This library offers an easy way to implement both tombstone and permanent persistence in WP7 & Windows 8 applications. The source code includes a demonstration of how to use the library with a normal MVVM pattern and MVVM Light..."

  • Unity 3.0 for .NET 4.5 and WinRT - Preview (Microsoft Patterns & Practices)

    • "The Unity 3.0.1208.0 Preview enables Unity to work on .NET 4.5 with both the WinRT and desktop profiles. This is an updated version of the port after the .NET Framework 4.5 and Windows 8 have RTM'ed..."

  • WCF Data Services Tools for Windows Store Apps RC (Microsoft Download Center)

    • "The WCF Data Services Tools for Windows Store Apps installer extends the Add Service Reference experience with client-side OData support for Windows Store Apps in Visual Studio 2012. The tooling will add references to NuGet packages capable of consuming OData services up to v3. Updated runtime assemblies will be made available through the normal NuGet package update experience..."

  • Bing Maps SDK for Metro style apps (Beta) (Visual Studio Gallery)

    • "Bing Maps SDK for Metro style apps (RTM Beta) combines the power of Windows 8 and Bing Maps™ to provide an enhanced mapping experience for modern style apps. Developers can use this Bing Maps control to incorporate the latest road maps and aerial views into a Windows 8 Metro style app. This SDK includes controls for apps built using JavaScript, as well as apps built using C#, C++, and Visual Basic, and requires a Bing Maps Key for a Windows Metro style app..."

Visual Studio 2012

  • Upgrading from Visual Studio 2012 RC to RTM (Heath Stewart)

    • "Now that Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 have been released, some customers are wondering if they need to uninstall the Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate (RC) first before upgraded. In general, the answer is "no". VS2012 RC will upgrade to RTM, but there are a few things to note..."

  • A certificate chain could not be built to a trusted root authority (Heath Stewart)

    • "After Visual Studio 2012 has been installed, the finish page displays the following: Setup Completed However, not all features installed correctly. ... A certificate chain could not be built to a trust root authority. Cause..."

Other

  • Contract Annotations in ReSharper 7 (JetBrains .NET Tools Blog)

    • "Since the introduction of the Annotations feature of ReSharper, developers have had the possibility to get deeper control flow analysis by annotating their code with attributes such as [CanBeNull], [UsedImplicitly] and many others. With the release of ReSharper 7, the wide range of annotations is augmented with one very powerful type: contract annotations..."