Windows App Developer Links - 2012-10-03

posted on 02 Oct 2012 | App Developer Links

Windows 8 App Development

  • App contests for Windows 8 developers (Andrei Marukovich)

    • "Windows 8 isn't released officially yet, but developers already have all the tools required for Windows 8 Store app development. Writing applications for the new, almost empty marketplace is a unique opportunity by itself, but to make it even more interesting Microsoft and Intel initiated two competitions..."

  • Connecting Windows 8 applications with services Part 4: Tile interactions in Windows 8 (Gill Cleeren)

    • "Welcome to what is already part 4 in this article series on working with services from Windows 8 applications. ... In the previous part, we've started our detour by looking at how we can upload and download external data using the background transfers in Windows 8. In this very article, we continue our little detour by looking at how tiles can interact with the outside world. This way, they can show up-to-date information and engage the user to start your application more often..."

  • Tutorial Series: using WinJS & WinRT to build a fun HTML5 Camera Application for Windows 8 (4/4) (David Rousset)

    • "In this fourth & last tutorial, we're going to play with pixels manipulation. We will first use the EaselJS library and its filters part to apply some Sepia, Black & White and Blur effects on the images taken. Then, we will see how to optimize the performance by not blocking the UI Thread and by using the Web Workers to use more of the available cores of our CPUs. At last, we will see how to go even further with a WinRT C++ component using shaders to discuss directly with the many-cores of the GPU..."

  • WinRT app guide: Step 10: Adding a lightweight database (SQLite) and CRUD support + two-way element binding (Iris Classon)

    • "A fairly delayed post unfortunately, to get us moving faster I've decided to add more features this time around so prepare for some big steps! So far we haven't discussed how we are going to store data, but I think it's about time we do that. And to do this we will use SQLite. To do this we need to add SQLite for Windows Runtime..."

  • Cryptography in WinRT (Nicolas Humann)

    • "The new cryptography API in WinRT is not very easy, especially if you know the .NET API... Here a small code to show how to use the APIs!..."

  • Super Simple Swipe Sections (Jeremy Foster)

    • "Yesteryear we used tabs in UI. The problem with tabs and similar navigation aides is that they demand pixels to tell users about where they might go, whereas, good Windows 8 design tells users about where they are. If you're on a page that shows multiple entities or sections or parts or whatever, just hint to the user that there's more off the page by giving yourself a left margin but cutting content off on the right. I made a pretty simple way to do this for a Windows 8 app and you're free to steal it..."

  • Microsoft DevRadio: Developing for Windows 8 in 1/2 the Time (Part 8) Using Media Queries to Manage Your Layouts (Channel 9)

    • "In today's episode Michael Palermo will show you how to manage your programs to work in different layouts via Media Queries. If you need to know how to control what needs to be done in various layouts - Portrait, landscape, snap-view, etc. this short how-to video is just for you..."

Other

  • TypeScript: JavaScript Development at Application Scale (S. Somasegar)

    • "In addition to supporting industry-standard programming languages, such as C++, Python, and JavaScript, Microsoft has always been at the forefront of creating great programming languages - Visual Basic, C#, and F# being the most recent examples. We create programming languages to solve problems and to enable a broad set of people to build software. Today, we're introducing a new programming language that solves a very specific problem - getting JavaScript development to scale. That language is TypeScript..."

  • Building Backbone Applications with TypeScript (Jeremy Likness)

    • "Hot off the press, TypeScript was announced earlier this week and has resulted in an explosion of commentary over Twitter and various blogs. The language claims to be tailored for application-scale development using JavaScript by providing a typed superset. It compiles to JavaScript so it will work in any browser. ... Instead of debating whether or not we need another language or if it is good or bad (and hey, I love C#, and I loved TurboPascal, so the fact that it was developed by Anders Hejlsberg doesn't hurt) I would rather jump into using it so I can start to get a feel for how it helps or hurts..."