Windows App Developer Links - 2012-09-07

posted on 07 Sep 2012 | App Developer Links

Windows 8 App Development

  • Embracing UI on demand with the app bar (Windows 8 app developer blog)

    • "Creating a great app requires honing in on what makes your app best in its category and making that shine. Windows 8 provides tools like charms and app bars to make it easy to really focus on what makes your app best in class and minimize anything that distracts from it. Learn to use those tools and your app and your users will be able to really enjoy what makes your app great..."

  • Referring to Package Files (Jeremy Foster)

    • "When you're working with a Windows 8 project in VS2012, you have some number of project files in your Solution Explorer. You have HTML files, CSS files, JavaScript files, images, and perhaps some XML or JSON or TXT files - something like that. If, in the course of executing logic in your app, you need to access these files, there are a number of ways and you should know when you might use what and why... that's as opposed to being incapacitated or stabbing in the dark..."

  • Parsing CSV Files in WinRT (Frank La Vigne)

    • "... Creating a CSV parser sounds like an easy task, but it's the developer equivalent to quick sand. CSV stands for Comma Separted Values and, despite the name, the files in this "format" are often not fields separated by commas. Often, tabs or pipe characters are used instead. Additionally, parsing a CSV file is not as straightforward as it seems. One would think that it would be as simple as splitting the raw text first by line to get the records and then by delimiter to extract the fields. Simple Enough, right? Like many elements to our line of work, it can be that simple, but it rarely is..."

  • Screen Scraper Utility Kit for WinRT (Frank La Vigne)

    • "Based on the success of the Screen Scraper Utility Kit for WP7, I decided to port the library over to Windows RT. It's now available on MSDN Code Samples for download. Technically, speaking this Utility Kit is an example of "Web Scraping, " but the FindElement and FindElements extension methods could work on any string. Screen/Web Scraping is a "time honored" approach to getting data from one place and getting to another. Why Screen Scraping? ..."

  • Enforcing square proportions in XAML (Andreas Hammar)

    • "In my current Windows 8 project, I needed an object on the screen to resize with screen size - and keep it's proportions. Turned out to be a bit trickier than I thought..."

  • Authenticating an ASMX Web Service in SharePoint from a WinRT app (Jose Sanchez)

    • "Where's the CookieContainer? Yes mate, I've had that question too. We are creating a new application for Windows 8 and we need it to connect to our web services. Connecting to the anonymous methods was easy, but when it comes to authenticating the user the situation changes. I was pretty confident, in this context confident is an euphemism for ignorant and naive, I could use the same approach I used when I was creating my apps for WP7 I have used it a thousand times and WP7 is more or less the same as WinRT so who would have thought it won't work? Well WinRT is not the same as WP7..."

  • How to create Animations in a Windows Store Game using HTML and JavaScript (David Isbitski)

    • "This is the eighth in a series of short screencasts that will teach you Windows Store App development in a fun and immersive way via casual gaming. This screencast share some ways you can add animations to your own Windows Store Games using HTML and JavaScript..."

Expression Blend

  • Adventures in Windows 8: Understanding and debugging design time data in Expression Blend (Laurent Bugnion)

    • "One of my favorite features in Expression Blend is the ability to attach a Visual Studio debugger to Blend. First let's start by answering the question: why exactly do you want to do that? Note: If you are familiar with the creation and usage of design time data, feel free to scroll down to the paragraph titled "When design time data fails". Creating design time data for your app..."

Internet Explorer 10

  • Emulating the "non-Desktop Experience" in the Desktop Experience (Eric Law)

    • "The new full-screen "fast and fluid" experience of IE10 on Windows 8 offers many improvements over Internet Explorer 10 on the Desktop (ranging from UX to Security), but one thing it lacks is the F12 Developer Tools, used by web developers to debug web pages. While you can use Visual Studio to debug pages, sometimes, debugging with the lightweight F12 Developer Tools on the Desktop can be simpler. However, what if your bug doesn't repro in the Desktop experience? ..."