Jerry Nixon @work

Customize the WP Emulator’s Skin!

2012-02-13T23:48:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I’ll say it. This is awesome.

On CodePlex, there’s a new project, the Windows Phone 7 Enulator Skin Switcher.

The Windows Phone 7 emulator skin switcher is an application that gives you multiple skins to use on your Windows Phone 7 emulator. Start the application, select one of the 25 available skins and you're done!

Who doesn’t want the pink Nokia? I mean seriously?!

Find the project site here.

WP7 REST without Sleeping

2012-02-13T15:38:00.001-07:00

My colleague Developer Evangelist for Windows Phone in California, Daniel Egan, has posted a helpful article on the step-by-step implementation for consuming REST data in a Windows Phone application.

Over and over again, I see developers that have this great idea for an application that pulls cool data from a great services BUT get tied up in the implementation of “Getting It Done”. So I thought I would show you a quick and easy way to get REST data from a service, transfer the JSON data to a POCO list and Bind it to a ListBox. (In under 3 minutes)

Read the article here.

WP7 Sample: A Microphone-enabled Phone App in 5 Minutes!

2012-02-13T15:31:00.001-07:00

There are a lot of sensors on the Windows Phone. We’ve got:

Microphone
GPS Location
Camera (front & back)
Gyroscope / Accelerometer
Magnetometer / Compass

I suppose we could also say the touch panel is a sensor, but it is so ubiquitous that we just assume it’s there anymore – yes, it’s that world we live in now, the “of course it’s touch enabled” world. Wonderful.

But how do you use the Microphone?

The Microphone

The Windows Phone microphone is in the Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio namespace. This means in order to access the microphone, you need to add a reference to Microsoft.Xna.Framework. Easy enough, I know – but you definitely have to do it.

Listen

The microphone is a mono input device. To “listen” with the microphone, you Start() the microphone and fill its buffer. Then while handling the BufferReady event, you read the buffer and append it to some stream (like a MemoryStream). It’s the stream that contains the audio; it’s the stream you can save to a file. The microphone’s state will remain Started until you call Stop().

Let’s Build Something!

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In the video above, we build a full application that will record from the microphone and play back whatever you record. (I know in the video you cannot hear the playback but it worked!)

Note: One important part of the code in the video is calling the FrameworkDispatcher.Update() method. This method is called automatically in XNA game classes. However, this is a Silverlight class so we must call it manually. The purpose of the method is to dispatch events that update XNA components and bring them to a ready (or other) state – this includes the microphone. 33 milliseconds is a recommended tick value.

You can get the raw code from the video here.

Conclusion

Building an application in Windows Phone is fast. The pieces you need are at arms reach, and the necessary plumbing is mostly built for you. The microphone is another way to let your user interact with your application – and another way to bring value from your application – and another way to fight against the UNINSTALL button. It may be simple, but is is very powerful.

Warning: every application on the Windows Phone has a memory limit of 90MB. As you are putting the chunks of sound into a MemoryStream (for example) be sure and anticipate if your application hits its memory threshold. Do you need to cache to disk (here’s how)? You are developer, you need to decide. But, in any case, plan for the worst scenario.

Best of luck!

Registration is required to continue using Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone?

2012-02-13T10:59:00.001-07:00

Did you try to run Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone and were promoted to register it?

Like this:

Did you think Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone was free?

Well, it is. Just register. We don’t ask much. And you it’s a fast response.

Like this:

Thank you for registering your copy of Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 Express for Windows Phone. Below you will find your product activation key and some additional resources to help you get started creating apps for Windows Phone. Unlike other Express products, Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone integrates with Visual Studio 2010 Professional and higher.

Now, start developing for Windows Phone.

Best of luck!

WP7 Sample: Use Location Services and get Certified!

2012-02-10T16:15:00.001-07:00

Allow me to draw your attention to this Windows Phone application Certification Requirement:

Requirement 2.7.2 The privacy policy of your application must inform users about how location data from the Location Service API is used and disclosed and the controls that users have over the use and sharing of location data. This can be hosted within or directly linked from the application.

Should you submit an application that uses Location Service API and do not provide a privacy policy you will get a friendly response from the certification something like this:

Fail: It appears the application uses location services but does not include a privacy policy describing how the application uses the Location Service API and what control users have over the usage and sharing of information obtained through that usage.

Did you know Microsoft employs more Attorneys than Developers? That’s totally not true! We have a platoon of attorneys and a battalion of developers. We’re a software company. But don’t screw with us! Just kidding – sort of.

Why do you need a Privacy Policy?

A Privacy Policy is necessary when you deal with personal information. A person’s current location (from the Location Services API) is considered personal information. And, of course, because the marketplace certification requirements say so.

Consider: Yes this may seem like a pain! But consider the user. They don’t know what mysteries you are tinkering with behind the scenes. You are their friend. You are their advocate. And, frankly, if you aren’t – who is? The user isn’t bashful to click that UNINSTALL button on apps they don’t trust. At the same time a policy is also for you, the developer. You need to help the user – but you also need to establish the rules you are playing by. This makes the user happy and far less shocked or angry when they realize you are doing something (anything!) with their personal data. The certification requirement is for the user; hopefully, you can see why it is also for you.

What is a Privacy Policy?

Thank you wikipedia:

Privacy policy is a statement or a legal document (privacy law) that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses and manages a customer or client's data. Personal information can be anything that can be used to identify an individual, not limited to but including; name, address, date of birth, marital status, contact information, ID issue and expiry date, financial records, credit information, medical history, where you travel, and intentions to acquire goods and services. In the case of a business it is often a statement that declares a party’s policy on how it collects, stores, and releases personal information it collects. It informs the client what specific information is collected, and whether it is kept confidential, shared with partners, or sold to other firms or enterprises.

May I summarize? A privacy policy promises users how you will use their information.

Could I get sued?

Are you kidding? We could all get sued – by anyone, for any thing, at any time. The better question is: “If I get sued am I in deep snow?” Well… every situation is different; should the plaintiff resurrect Jonny Cochran you might be up Snow Creek regardless of the details. But the purpose of a policy is to give your users options and give you guidelines. Just remember this: you need to obey your own privacy policy.

How do you write a Policy?

I use Microsoft Word. But that’s not useful, is it? The reality is you just do it (see the warning at bottom). The most important thing for you to know is that I am not going to write your privacy policy. A privacy policy should be tailored to suit your unique situation. Even if your situation is identical to mine, it is important that you take care to ensure your privacy policy meets your needs.

Note: you don’t need an airtight, attorney-written policy to be marketplace certified. You just need a policy. They don’t judge the merit of your policy (they are not your adjunct legal staff). They just ensure you have a policy – end of story. However, that doesn’t mean you don’t need an airtight, attorney-written policy. See the difference?

Here’s my Policy

I have an application in the Marketplace that uses the Location Services API. I needed a privacy policy. Here’s how I wrote it:

Imitation is the best compliment, right? So, let’s look at important parts of Microsoft’s Privacy Policy:

In order to access some Microsoft services, you will be asked to sign in.

Microsoft collects and uses your personal information to operate and improve its sites and services.

Personal information collected on Microsoft sites and services may be stored.

Except as described in this statement, we will not disclose your personal information outside of Microsoft.

We may also disclose personal information as part of a corporate transaction.

Microsoft is committed to protecting the security of your personal information.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies.

If you have questions regarding this statement, you should first contact us

Let me rewrite those for my app:

This application uses your current location.

This is used to improve the mapping experience.

This may be stored.

This may be shared.

Your privacy is important to us.

At any time, you can disable this function.

If you have questions, contact email@email.com

Now let’s turn it into my policy statement:

Your privacy is important to us. This application uses your current location to improve your mapping experience. This may be stored and shared. You may disable Location Services. If you have questions, contact email@email.com.

How to use it?

Implementing a settings page that incorporates your privacy policy and user consent is the best thing.

Something like this:

With this XAML:

In the code above, the only tricky thing to notice is that   is equivalent to an HTML   character (which is a space). Using <Underline> in a TextBlock strips adjacent spaces.

With this code behind:

In the code above, we do a few things. First we assume the setting is true if never set. This means the user is opting out. Your code might want to do the reverse. Then, see the EmailComposeTask? This helps the user by pre-composing the email message (if they want to ask a question) and calling Show() lets the Windows Phone OS do the rest – they will get the typical email dialog and are required to push Send.

Conclusion

Nobody installs an application that isn’t in the marketplace. And no application that uses Location Services gets into the marketplace without a privacy policy.

Hopefully this will give you a little guidance on meeting Requirement 2.7.2 for certification.

Major Warning

This blog article is not legal advice. I do not represent you. In fact, I don’t even know you. When you create a privacy policy, you could be doing it wrong. Perhaps you have an attorney friend you could ask. Perhaps you just want to risk it. Or, perhaps you want to reach out to an attorney professionally. Please don’t let this blog be your legal guide.

Now, start developing!

Best of luck!

Mango Sample: Give your app the Finger!

2012-02-07T16:09:00.001-07:00

My colleague Developer Evangelist, Sam Stokes, in California has written a compelling article on dragging items in Windows Phone.

But I have a problem with Sam’s approach

Maybe it’s because I have a problem with Sam – but probably not; he’s actually one of my top 90,000 people @ Microsoft. So, let’s talk about moving things in XAML!

Sam moves objects around by incrementing and decrementing an item’s top/left dependency property inside a Canvas.

Like this:

In the code above, Sam is using the ManipuationDelta event. This awesome event allows an individual UI element to track the movement of finger gestures on it. It simplifies the typical events that have to handle and track.

MSDN: The ManipulationDelta event occurs multiple times when the user drags fingers over the screen during a manipulation and again when inertia occurs. You can use the IsInertial property to check whether the event is occurring during inertia.

The element on with ManipulationDelta event occurs is not affected in any way when the event occurs. You must provide the logic to the element that is to be manipulated. The CumulativeManipulation and DeltaManipulation properties, which are of type ManipulationDelta, contain data about how the position of the manipulations change and interpreted as moving, resizing, or rotating an object. You apply that information to the element that is to be manipulated.

But there’s more to that code. Sam might be using the coolest event, but how is he relocating the ellipse? He’s incrementing and decrementing the Canvas.Top and Left dependency properties. When he does this, the ellipse appears to move and track the finger on the touch panel.

What’s the problem?

The problem is deep. And I have to start by saying that Sam’s approach is not necessarily wrong. There could be situations where position inside a canvas is the best choice. However, let’s talk about the downsides:

Canvas or Grid?

Changing the top/left of a child element will give the impression that it is moving. But inside a grid you need to change the margin. If you want to move two items you need to factor in the distance between them. What’s the problem? Well, should you use canvas or grid or something else? It simply means this approach is a potentially inconsistent approach.

Who’s your Neighbor

Changing the top/left of a child element will give the impression that it is moving. Any peer elements whose layout is bound to the location of the moving object must be redrawn with ever value change. What’s the problem? Well, do you really know every potentially related element? It simply means this approach is a potentially expensive approach.

GPU Acceleration

Transforms are a regimented approach to altering an element, even moving it. Hardware acceleration can be attached to consistent, regimented approaches. What’s the problem? How can the GPU understand why you are changing a dependency property’s value? It can’t. It simply means this approach cannot take advantage of GPU hardware acceleration.

Is there an alternative?

Yes. It’s TranslateTransform – a Silverlight class specifically designed to accommodate the task of moving objects from one position to another. (TranslateTransform is also part of WPF). And get this, even in the documentation dips into this discussion:

MSDN: The local 0,0 for an object can be offset on a Canvas using Canvas.Left and Canvas.Top, but this does not count as a transform; the object retains its own local 0,0 in this case for transform purposes.

A TranslateTransform is easy to use. A TranslateTransform has an X and Y property which correlate to the relative position to the element’s original layout location. As you would expect, negative numbers move it in a reverse direction.

Apply a TranslateTransform like this:

And implement it like this:

In the code above, I handle the ManipulationDelta event to track the touch gestures by the user. In the handler, I increment and decrement the X and Y values of the TranslateTransform – just like Sam. And just like Sam, my object tracks (or moves) with the user’s finger. But unlike Sam, my approach is hardware accelerated and a common, repeatable pattern.

Conclusion

Admittedly, I am sort of picking on my colleague to make a point. The reality is, Sam’s approach works. In fact, it is a very common approach to moving elements in a XAML environment, but there are downsides – do those downsides really matter? Maybe not enough for you to rewrite your application, but then again maybe so.

You’re the developer, you need to make the final call. Now you have a little more information. Informed decisions are usually better decisions. But I can’t tell you what is right for your application. What I can tell you is that TranslateTransform is easy to use, powerful, high performing, and a consistent approach. Other than that, it’s up to you.

Special acknowledgement to Sam Stokes for starting a great discussion.

Best of luck!

A Phone App on every Platform?

2012-02-07T14:56:00.001-07:00

My colleague Windows Phone Developer Evangelist, Daniel Egan, has set out to do the impossible. Only kidding. He has set out to measure the real differences between building an app on Windows Phone, the IPhone, and Android. I am excited to see his conclusions.

I certainly have my opinions on operating systems, and ease of development, and best IDEs etc… but I thought I would put this to the test with a multi platform development approach. Starting next week, I will be doing the same application on all three platforms (or possibly 6 if I include IPad, Android Tablet and Win 8 later). The application is called Uncorked, and it is a way to log and rate your wine collection.

Read the article here.

Mango Sample: A Cloud-based Phone App in 5 Minutes

2012-02-07T14:49:00.001-07:00

When you create a Windows Phone application you might have some data to store. Where do you store it?

Well, there’s always Isolated Storage. I discuss that here.
There’s always a local SQL Database. I discuss that here.

But, what if on-the-phone isn’t good enough? …to the cloud! I discuss that here [there’s no link because this is the article! :)].

Why the cloud?

There are lots of great reasons. Here are a few:

Your data needs to be updated or refreshed, call the cloud
Your data needs to be saved for roaming users, call the cloud
Your data is huge and phones only need a bit, call the cloud

Before you do anything, you might want to check if there’s even a network to use. To detect the network, WiFi, and so much more, read this article.

Service References

Creating a Service Reference to some remote Web Service is a snap.

MSDN: The Internet is host to an extensive variety of web and data services that you can use in your Windows Phone applications to create compelling new user experiences. This topic introduces networking and web services, and describes the primary classes and utilities that you can use for building web-integrated Windows Phone applications. [snip/] Because the vast majority of web services published on the Internet are based on HTTP, you can use the HttpWebRequest and WebClient classes to access web services from Windows Phone applications. To help ease the task of generating the additional code that web services often require, you can use the Silverlight Service Model Proxy Generation Tool (SLsvcUtil.exe) or the Visual Studio Add Service Reference feature to generate a proxy class.

Security Consideration

When connecting to a web service that requires an application key, do not store the application key with an application that will be run on a device. Instead, you can create a proxy web service to authenticate a user and call an external cloud service with the application key. For more information about security recommendations, see Web Service Security for Windows Phone.

Let’s see it!

In the following video, we’ll create both the phone application and the web service:

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In the video above, I create a service-based Windows Phone application. I’m the kind of guy who likes to have samples be simple so I can get the technique without having to understand some complex back story. Hopefully, that rings helpful for you like it does for me. Here are the key steps:

Create the Windows Phone application project
Create the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service application
Implement the logic in the WCF service
Add a Service Reference to the WCF service in the WP application
Implement the UI in the WP application
Call the service and watch the magic

Conclusion

Adding cloud services to your windows phone application can add a lot of flexibility and power to your application. The better your application, the less likely users will hit that UNINSTALL button – after all, that’s what we are working against, here, right?

A few gotchas to remember:

Using the cloud means you need a network
The user might be out of signal reach
The user might be in airplane mode
Be a good bandwidth user – don’t overdo it

Adding a Service Reference creates the asynchronous proxy code for you – then, as the developer, the rest it up to your creativities.

Best of luck!

Supporting sensors in Windows 8

2012-02-06T13:45:00.001-07:00

The Windows 8 Team has written a blog article around how Windows 8 will support sensors – letting developers built extremely robust applications that interact with the user.

To pull all of this together, our final challenge was to make the power and promise of sensor fusion available to those writing Metro style apps. To enable this, we designed a sensor API as part of the new WinRT. Through these APIs, developers can access the power of sensor fusion from any Metro style app. These APIs are clean and simple, and at the same time give developers access to the data needed to support everything from casual games to virtual reality applications. Of course these capabilities are all available as Win32 APIs for game developers or other uses in desktop applications.

Read the whole article here.

Does it still make sense to learn ASP.Net?

2012-01-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a fascinating question! Scott Gutherie deals with that and other great questions during his User Group presentation to LIDNUG on Jan 16, 2012.

What is the future of Silverlight?
Will Silverlight desktop apps run on Windows 8?
What's new in .Net 4.5?
Does it still make sense to learn ASP.Net?
What is the MVC 4 mobile story?

Hear it here!

Getting Started with Mobile Web Development Using HTML5, jQuery Mobile, and ASP.NET MVC 4

2012-01-23T14:40:00.000-07:00

Don't miss out on this first-in-a-series article leveraging cutting-edge web technologies to build mobile applications. By using HTML5, jQuery Mobile and ASP.NET MVC 4, you can target multiple mobile platforms with a single code base!

By creating mobile Web applications that take advantage of HTML5, jQuery Mobile and ASP.NET MVC 4, you can effectively target multiple platforms with a single code base. Any browser, including mobile Web browsers, can render the HTML pages created with these technologies. You’ll still need to consider dealing with different browsers, but overall, Web applications are much easier to develop and maintain than multiple native applications in different languages.

Read the article here.

Mango Tip: Awesome Marketplace Screenshots

2012-01-20T21:45:00.001-07:00

Here’s a tool that makes your emulator’s start screen look less like an emulator and more like a phone.

If you look at screenshots in the Marketplace that show the Start Screen, you will notice something strange – they all look the same – usually an Internet Explorer tile and a tile for the app. There are 2 reasons devs don’t show more tiles:
1. Sometimes, you don’t want the start screen to be too “noisy”
2. It’s impossible with the default emulator provided by Microsoft.

Read the whole article.

PhoneGap fully supports Windows Phone

2012-01-20T21:33:00.001-07:00

In addition to being able to leverage their HTML5 and Javascript skills to target Windows Phone, developers can now enjoy a selection of PhoneGap Plugins that support social networks and a solid integration into Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone.

Read the full article here.

OData T4 for C# Preview 1

2012-01-20T21:27:00.001-07:00

My colleagues on the WCF Data Services Team have announced OData T4 for C#.

If you are not already into OData – then you need to consider Odata your solution to simple exposing your data through a queriable service.
If you are not already into T4 – then you need to consider T4 your code generation solution, completely built into Visual Studio.

I’m very excited to announce the release of OData T4 for C# Preview 1, for the October 2011 CTP of the next version of WCF Data Services libraries, with support for code generation of service operations. The goal of this T4 preview and subsequent ones will be to get community feedback on the templates before having “Add Service Reference” natively generate T4 templates out of the box in a future release.

Read the article here.

Windows Server 8 and ReFS

2012-01-20T21:21:00.001-07:00

Building Windows 8 is an inside look from the Windows engineer team. In this recent article, the team discusses ReFS – an exciting storage feature of Windows 8 Server.

Today, NTFS is the most widely used, advanced, and feature rich file system in broad use. But when you’re reimagining Windows, as we are for Windows 8, we don’t rest on past successes, and so with Windows 8 we are also introducing a newly engineered file system. ReFS, (which stands for Resilient File System), is built on the foundations of NTFS, so it maintains crucial compatibility while at the same time it has been architected and engineered for a new generation of storage technologies and scenarios.

Read the whole article here.

Windows Server 8 Storage Management

2012-01-20T21:04:00.001-07:00

Windows Server 8 is introducing seriously big and awesome enhancements for the enterprise. As a cloud-optimized operating system, Storage Management has a host of new features and requirements.

My colleague IT Pro evangelist, Chris Henley, in California has an awesome, live interview with Microsoft’s Distinguished Engineer and Lead Architect for Windows Server, Jeffery Snover – on TechNet Radio.

Tune in as they discuss new storage management features in Windows Server 8, how it integrates with PowerShell and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 as well as what this all means for Cloud Computing and Virtualization going forward.

See the whole article here.

System Center’s Private Cloud

2012-01-20T20:58:00.001-07:00

My colleague IT Pro Evangelist in California just posted a clear and exciting explanation of the changes to System Center to create a Private Cloud in enterprises leveraging Microsoft technologies.

As you may have heard, there have been some big announcements regarding System Center 2012. All of these announcements are directly related to the Private Cloud conversations I have been having with IT Pro’s for the last year. Before I dig into the specific announcement information, let me summarize the importance of Private Clouds.

Just download System Center now!

The the whole article here.

Massively Scalable Azure

2012-01-20T20:53:00.001-07:00

My colleague Developer Evangelist in Southern California, Bruno Terkaly, recently presented a compelling web cast on Building a Massively Scalable Platform for Consumer Devices on Windows Azure. Don’t miss this!

The webcast is based on a talk I did at the ATT developer summit in Las Vegas last week. If you’ve been following the previous posts, this represents the live presentation of that material, where I illustrate how to build a restful service and deploy it to the Microsoft cloud. I also illustrate how to consume this restful service from multiple clients, including mobile clients, such as Windows Phone.

See the web cast here.

WebMatrix in Minutes

2012-01-20T13:17:00.001-07:00

Alice Pang, one of my colleague Developer Evangelists in California recently published an awesome walk through to “Get your site up and running in Minutes with WebMatrix”.

Do you have a New Year’s Resolution to build your own website? If not, it’s a pretty good one that can be fulfilled in under ten minutes! Here’s a video that shows you how to download WebMatrix, gives you a quick tour of WebMatrix 2 Beta released in November 2011, and creates, customizes, and publishes a website using web hosting from dotNet-host.com

Read the article here.

5 Questions on Solid State

2012-01-20T13:14:00.001-07:00

One of our Colorado Storage MVPs, and coordinator of the Windows Technology User Group, recently wrote an article Search Data Center addressing 5 of the core questions around SSD.

Everyone wants better storage performance and solid state drive (SSD) devices can deliver data at phenomenal speeds while also saving energy. But can your data center’s network handle the data equivalent of switching from a water bubbler to a fire hose before making such a costly investment? In this Q&A, storage expert Dennis Martin, founder and president of Demartek, a computer industry analyst organization, shares his insights on SSD technology and addresses the concerns every potential SSD adopter should consider.

Read the article here.

Better than Batman

2012-01-20T13:03:00.001-07:00

One of our Colorado community leaders, Steve Jones, knows SQL Server inside and out. In a recent blog post, however, he steps through the considerable accomplishment of the man who is Chairman of the Board for Microsoft Corporation.

He left Microsoft as a full time employee in 2008, and has moved on to working with the Gates Foundation. His missions there, along with his wife, Melinda, is to improve people’s lives. The foundation has primarily focused on ending disease and hunger in developing countries, and to date has done some very good work for millions around the globe.

Read the entire article here.

Git: Rollback

2012-01-20T12:55:00.001-07:00

One of our local C# MVPs, William Wegerson, details how to roll back to previous a change set in Git’s source control. This informative article can walk you through a tough spot.

In the case where one pulls from a repository such as GitHub and something breaks, one may want to undo that pull. Here are the steps to rollback to a previous version using Git. Of course you have only delayed the inevitable. One usually does this because something about the current state of changes in the remote is just not palatable and someone else is working on it. When ready do a normal pull to pull down those new changes and merge.

Read the entire article here.

William Wegerson is one of our Colorado C# MVPs.
Learn more about his MVP.
Find his on Linked In.
Read his Blog.

Mango Sample: a Secondary Tile in 5 Minutes

2012-01-20T10:23:00.001-07:00

Your Windows Phone application is fast. Your Windows Phone application uses animations. Your Windows Phone application is Metro. How can you make it better?

Think about your user at a bus stop. They see the bus coming. “Oh!” they think, remembering they need some information from your app. Can they get to it before the bus arrives?

Tiles

Every application has a primary tile – it is displayed in the application list or start screen. Here’s how they are structured:

Secondary Tiles

A secondary tile is another door to your application – instead of the typical front-door, secondary tiles let users skip to important parts directly. They can look like your primary tile, or any way you want them. Let’s create one together:

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

Get the code here.

Conclusion

Adding secondary tiles makes your application that much more friendly and useful to your users.

Remember, we are fighting against UNINSTALL!

Best of luck!

Mango Sample: Delete Dramatically

2012-01-19T10:33:00.001-07:00

In a previous post I walked through the five must-have animations for a Windows Phone application. Since then, some readers have offered a 6th – the “Delete from a List” animation.

This animation is also a great opportunity to tout the virtues of the ObservableCollection. The Observable Collection is a standard Collection that has events tied to the Add and Remove operations.

These events are automatically subscribed to in XAML and allow the UI to keep up-to-date with the back-end changes being made to the data source.

Specifically, it implements the INotifyCollectionChanged interface.

MSDN: You can enumerate over any collection that implements the IEnumerable interface. However, to set up dynamic bindings so that insertions or deletions in the collection update the UI automatically, the collection must implement theINotifyCollectionChanged interface. This interface exposes the CollectionChanged event, an event that should be raised whenever the underlying collection changes.

Animation is not Enough

However you visually decide to remove an item from a list, using Opacity, a ScaleTransform, or some other trick, the job is not complete until the data is actually removed from the underlying data.

As a result of this, a pure-XAML storyboard is not going to be enough. Not only will it be far more complex, but only code-behind will be able to remove the item from the collection.

Opacity

In the following video, I walk through how to create an animation on the ListBoxItem’s Opacity property.

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

Get the code here.

Using ScaleTransform

In the following video, I walk through how to create an animation on a ScaleTransform’s ScaleX and Y properties.

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

Get the code here.

Conclusion

In all reality, there is no standard that I can see for this animation. Let your creative juices flow, with these caveats:

Don’t over-do it – animations can be annoying if you try to hard
Don’t take too long – users like animations, but only for a split second

I can’t say enough how important animations are to your application.

Remember, we are working against the UNINSTALL button – so pour on the pride of ownership. Do good.

Best of luck!

Mango Sample: The ApplicationBar’s Secret Blend?

2012-01-18T12:52:00.001-07:00

A Windows Phone application is made up of a frame and pages. The Pages are made up of XAML that define the UI and the Application Bar. The Application Bar is made up of Application Bar Icon Buttons and Menu Items.

MSDN: The default Application Bar is a row of icon buttons and an ellipsis along the bottom of the phone’s screen. The user can click the ellipsis to display the labels for the icon buttons and menu items if they are enabled. The Application Bar has built-in animation that is displayed as the menu is shown or hidden. Also, the Application Bar automatically adjusts when the phone changes orientation. When the phone is in landscape orientation, the Application Bar appears on the side of the screen vertically. This maximizes the remaining space for page content.

Icon Buttons

The Application Bar is a row of icon buttons along the bottom of the phone’s screen.

Icon images should be 48 x 48 pixels in size.
Icon images should fit in a 26 x 26 area, not overlapping the circle.
The circle is drawn by the Application Bar and should not be included in the image.
Icon images should use a white foreground on a transparent background.
Windows Phone automatically colors the icon according to the theme selection.
Keep Icon Button labels as short as possible. Text may be truncated.
Choose icons with clear meanings.

Menu Items

In addition to the icon buttons, you can add one or more text-based menu items. These items are displayed in a list that slides up from underneath the icon buttons when the user clicks the ellipsis. The menu items are used for application actions that are less frequently used, or for actions that are difficult to convey with only an icon.

Creating in Visual Studio

In the following video, I walk through how to create an Application Bar in Visual Studio.

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

Creating in Expression Blend

In the following video, I walk through how to create an Application Bar in Expression Blend.

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

Conclusion

Expression Blend is really cool magic in the developers tool belt.

Best of luck!

Jerry Nixon @work

Customize the WP Emulator’s Skin!

Find the project site here.

WP7 REST without Sleeping

Read the article here.

WP7 Sample: A Microphone-enabled Phone App in 5 Minutes!

The Microphone

Listen

Let’s Build Something!

Conclusion

Registration is required to continue using Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone?

WP7 Sample: Use Location Services *and* get Certified!

Why do you need a Privacy Policy?

What is a Privacy Policy?

Could I get sued?

How do you write a Policy?

Here’s my Policy

How to use it?

Something like this:

With this XAML:

With this code behind:

Conclusion

Major Warning

Mango Sample: Give your app the Finger!

But I have a problem with Sam’s approach

Like this:

What’s the problem?

Canvas or Grid?

Who’s your Neighbor

GPU Acceleration

Is there an alternative?

Conclusion

A Phone App on every Platform?

Read the article here.

Mango Sample: A Cloud-based Phone App in 5 Minutes

Why the cloud?

Service References

Security Consideration

Let’s see it!

Conclusion

A few gotchas to remember:

Supporting sensors in Windows 8

Read the whole article here.

Does it still make sense to learn ASP.Net?

Getting Started with Mobile Web Development Using HTML5, jQuery Mobile, and ASP.NET MVC 4

Mango Tip: Awesome Marketplace Screenshots

Read the whole article.

PhoneGap fully supports Windows Phone

Read the full article here.

OData T4 for C# Preview 1

Read the article here.

Windows Server 8 and ReFS

Windows Server 8 Storage Management

See the whole article here.

System Center’s Private Cloud

Massively Scalable Azure

See the web cast here.

WebMatrix in Minutes

Read the article here.

5 Questions on Solid State

Read the article here.

Better than Batman

Read the entire article here.

Git: Rollback

Read the entire article here.

Mango Sample: a Secondary Tile in 5 Minutes

Tiles

Secondary Tiles

Conclusion

Mango Sample: Delete Dramatically

Animation is not Enough

Opacity

Using ScaleTransform

Conclusion

Mango Sample: The ApplicationBar’s Secret Blend?

Icon Buttons

Menu Items

Creating in Visual Studio

Creating in Expression Blend

Conclusion

WP7 Sample: Use Location Services and get Certified!