Michael Crump

Great FREE Tool for Presenters using a Mac to Draw on the Screen

2013-05-23T00:21:00-07:00

Introduction

I've been watching several courses on PluralSight by Jon Flanders on iOS programming and and was wondering how he was drawing on the screen. I'm familiar with ZoomIt, which is a freeware utility by Microsoft, but haven't found the same sort of thing for Mac (for free). Anyways, I pinged Jon on Twitter and he told me was using OmniDazzle. After downloading and installing it, I found out just how easy it was to use as shown below:

Simply switch to the "Scribble" screen and read the info screen! The pen that I was the most interested in was called "pen 2" because it is red. It can be activated by pressing Control-2. You can then turn it off by pressing Control-`. There is no reason to remember this as it is included on the Scribble info tab. If you are interested in changing the keyboard configuration, then simply click on the "Configuration" tab and configure until your heart is content.

Wrap-Up

if you are looking for a great way to show your audience exactly what you are talking about then I highly recommend this free tool! As always, take care and I'll see you in the next blog post.

How to Specify the Startup Page in Windows Phone

2013-05-18T07:00:00-07:00

Introduction

Something that I get quite often is how do you specify the startup page in Windows Phone. Most people are trying to use the MVVM pattern and by default the MainPage.xaml lives in the root folder as shown below:

Most MVVM purist wants this folder to be clean, and only have the App.xaml and App.xaml.cs left. All of the Views should be located in the Views folder.

(You can move the LocalizedStrings.cs to a helper class)

How to do it?

I’ve found the easiest way to do is by deleting the MainPage.xaml file from the root of your project and adding it back to your Views (Add-New Item-Phone-Windows Phone Portrait Page). Then going to your WMAppManifest.xaml file found in Properties and changing the Navigation Page as shown below:

If you simply drag and drop the MainPage.xaml file, you will need to fix your x:Class in MainPage.xaml to point to the new location. So, in this case the project is named PhoneAppMVVM it would go from:

x:Class="PhoneAppMVVM.MainPage"

x:Class="PhoneAppMVVM.Views.MainPage"

and the MainPage.xaml.cs file would need to be modified from:

namespace PhoneAppMVVM

namespace PhoneAppMVVM.Views

Now we have a nicely structured MVVM application that is easy to find what you are looking for fast! The final project solution should look like the following:

Wrap-up

I hope this helped and until next time, Michael signing off.

Taking a look at the various API levels available for Android

2013-05-06T02:39:00-07:00

Introduction

I’m currently getting up to speed with iOS, Android (native and Xamarin) and Firefox mobile development. As you can tell from my blog, I am still very much in love with Windows Phone, but would like to stay abreast with other mobile platforms as well. With that said, one thing that confused me when working with Android is all of the different API versions available. I’ve provided a screenshot below of the different emulators you can start with Xamarin.

The table provided below maps, the API level to OS version and name. (I’ve left off 17 which is JellyBean, because that emulator image is not installed on my machine).

API Level	OS Version	OS Name
7	2.1.x	ÉCLAIR_MR1
8	2.2.x	FROYO_MR1
10	2.3.3 and 2.3.4	GINGERBREAD_MR1
12	3.1.x	HONEYCOMB_MR1
14	4.0, 4.0.1, 4.0.2	ICE CREAM SANDWICH
15	4.03, 4.04	ICE CREAM SANDWICH_MR1

The _MR1 stands for “Maintenance Release”. You will probably notice that anything under version 7 of the API is not included. You can still download the image, but very few users are using those older devices. It also skips the non-maintenance release images (ex. 9, 11, 13). You don’t need them on your system if you have the _MR1 as it includes everything in the previous version. More in-depth info can be found here.

The Manifest File

In Windows Phone, we have the WMAppManifest.xml. In Android, we have the AndroidManifest.xml. Both of these files are similar in nature in that they describe certain aspects of your projects. Relating to the various Android API levels, you can specify the minimum API level as well as the target API level.

The minimum API Level is the lowest API that the application will run on. If you are using Xamarin.Android for Visual Studio 2012, you can select the project properties and set it under the “Application” tab. One thing to note is that it list the “Minimum Android to target” instead of the API Level. If you look back at my chart, then you will see this maps to API 8.

The target API Level specifies the API Level on which the application is designed to run. In some cases, this allows the application to use manifest elements or behaviors defined in the target API Level, rather than being restricted to using only those defined for the minimum API Level. This can be set in the “Android Manifest” page in the project properties in Visual Studio 2012 as shown below. This time it provides the API level to select from.

Note: A AndroidManifest.xml file is created automatically for you using Xamarin. Upon first click of this tab, you will need to create one if you want to customize this.

Taking a look at the Completed Android Package File.

Once compiled, you will find the apk file in the “bin” folder as shown below. One is signed and the other is not. Make a copy of the unsigned one and rename it to .zip to view the contents.

Here is the contents of the hello.world.apk. We are only interested in the AndroidManifest.xml file, so you can ignore the others for now.

If we try to open the AndroidManifest.xml in notepad, then we obviously can’t read it with the naked eye:

This is where we can make use of a tool supplied by Android called aapt.exe (Android Asset Packaging Tool) found in the C:\Users\<Your User Name>\AppData\Local\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools folder.

Simply run this command in a command prompt with the .apk file copied to this directory. An example of the command can be found below.

aapt l –a packagename.apk

Scroll down until you find the “uses-sdk” as shown below.

To make things easier to read, I’ve also included it below:

E: uses-sdk (line=3)
  A: android:minSdkVersion(0x0101020c)=(type 0x10)0x8
  A: android:targetSdkVersion(0x01010270)=(type 0x10)0xf

Converting Hexadecimal to Decimal, we can see that the minSdkVersion ends in 0x8 which equals API level 8 and the targetSdkVersion ends in 0xf which equals API level 15. This is exactly what how we set those fields earlier.

Conclusion

I hope this helps clear up API version levels in Android as I’ve been curious as to how it works. If you have any questions then feel free to drop me a line below and I’ll be talking about all kinds of mobile development in the future.

Setting the Default Emulator Image in Xamarin.Android

2013-04-28T07:00:00-07:00

Introduction

If you are using Xamarin with Visual Studio 2012 to build Android applications, then one thing you need to get used to is the concept of AVD (Android Virtual Devices). Upon the first launch of an Android application built with Xamarin you have to go through the following steps:

Select the “Start emulator image” as shown below.

Select which image you want to load and press OK. (All of these are installed by default)

Give it a few minutes and the emulator is loaded.

At this point, you will need to switch back to Visual Studio 2012 and select from the list which running device you want to deploy the application to and press OK.

Visual Studio 2012 will then package the app and deploy it to the emulator.

If you launch the application again, it will ask by default which emulator image to use again.

Let’s see if we can make this a bit easier. The default Visual Studio 2012 toolbar looks like the following:

If we use the Visual Studio 2012 Quick Launch, then we can type android and see the following list:

Select Views –> Toolbars –> Xamarin.Android and your toolbar will now look like the following:

You can now switch the “Prompt for Device” option to be whichever image is currently running, saving you an extra step in the deployment process.

Conclusion

I hope this helped as I have been experimenting with Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android and absolutely love it. If you have any questions, then just let me know.

Setting up a Command (MVVM) in Windows Phone 8 Video Tutorial

2013-04-18T03:35:00-07:00

Introduction

I hear this question a lot.. Should I use code-behind or MVVM in my application? What are the pros/cons of each and can you show me a simple example of how a Command works?

With Code-Behind – Your page is tightly coupled with your UI, testing is harder, it gets really messy with larger apps. On the other hand, smaller apps with just a couple of screens, it may make sense.
With MVVM – You can make drastic changes to the UI, with no impact to the data and business logic (true separation of concerns), easier to test, not necessary IMHO for smaller apps with just a couple of screens.

I could go a lot deeper with this topic but won't at this time. I’d really encourage you to use your Google-Fu to do more in-depth research on this.

Others may agree or disagree with me regarding smaller apps, but hey, that is my opinion. :) I’m also not a purist – meaning that I don’t find a problem with having some code-behind in my MVVM apps. I guess that counts as another strike against me! Dang it!

A Simple Example of Setting Up a Command

Anyways, I decided to try out CodeProject.TV to launch a simple example called, “Setting up a Command (MVVM) in Windows Phone 8”. In this video, I show you how Commands work for projects that use MVVM (Model View View-Model). I will take a simple button and add a Command to it to display a MessageBox. This same code would work with other XAML platforms, such as WPF, SL, Windows Phone 7.x and Windows Store Apps (except the XMLNS declaration).

Let me know if you need any help and please vote up the video!

Say What? Incorporating Windows Phone 8 Speech Recognition into Your Apps

2013-04-09T07:00:00-07:00

I have a new in-depth article published online in Visual Studio Magazine today called, “Say What? Incorporating Windows Phone 8 Speech Recognition into Your Apps”.

See below for more information and a link to the online article.

Article Introduction

Summary: The Windows Phone 8 SDK added a speech recognition API that's easy to use and flexible. Learn how to put it to work in your application.

Intro:

I think it's safe to say that a majority of mobile developers tend to skip any first-generation mobile OSes in case the platform fails to take off. Now that we're seeing the third-generation of Windows Phone 8, more and more developers are taking note. With a new OS also comes new hardware to take advantage of several key features in the API. Windows Phone 8 includes all sorts of new features such as near-field communication, native code support, in-app purchasing, speech recognition and more.

In this article, I'll focus solely on the speech recognition API introduced in Windows Phone 8. There are two speech components commonly used in most applications: Text-to-Speech (TTS) and Speech-to-Text (STT). I'll show you how to work with both.

The Full Article

The full article is hosted on Visual Studio Magazine and you can access it by clicking here. Don’t forget to rate it and leave comments if you have any problems.

Nice Tool for Presenters who use Visual Studio 2012

2013-03-26T00:19:00-07:00

Introduction

While setting up for my Nokia Lumia Labs presentation, I had one of the organizers ask me how I was able to switch fonts and make everything easier to read in a matter of seconds. I told him that I simply installed the Productivity Power Tools for Visual Studio 2012 and with 2 simple commands could switch between presenter mode or non-presenter mode.

Let’s see how it works.

By typing ‘present’, from the Visual Studio Quick Launch bar, then you will see the following:

By selecting, “PresentOn” then Visual Studio will adjust fonts, etc. automatically as shown below (Click to enlarge image):

Not only did the font size for the code adjust, but the menu bar and solution explorer did as well.

By selecting, “PresentOff” then Visual Studio will adjust back to normal (Click to enlarge image):

Wrap-Up

This has worked great in my last several presentations. The only downside is that this only works with Visual Studio 2012 Professional and up. I’m sure most of you are using it already.

Got a tip for your fellow presenter? Share it in the comments below. I love exploring tools new tools that helps my audience learn better.

Cool Feature in Windows Phone 8–Lock Your Phone From Anywhere.

2013-03-18T07:00:00-07:00

How to Lock your Windows Phone 8 Device

One cool feature in Windows Phone 8 that I hardly hear anyone talking about is the ability to “Lock” your phone from anywhere. This is great for those times where you are in a meeting and left your phone unattended on your desk and don’t want your co-workers sending tweets on your behalf. :)

Note: You can also do this for WP7 devices by going to the URL specified below.

You can do this very easily by launching the Windows Phone application found on your Windows 8 Start Screen or navigating to this site https://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/my/find?signin=true.

If you choose the app, select the option to “Find, ring, lock or erase your phone”.

It will launch a Web Browser and from here you can “Lock” your phone. You can also do such things as “Ring” or “Erase” the phone.

Once you click on “Lock” you can type a message to be displayed and hit the lock button.

Of course, it needs an internet connection of some sort and you will see the progress bar located below.

Once it has locked your phone, then it will display this screen in the browser.

Now if you take a look at your phone, it will be locked and display the text you entered. Very cool!

Wrap-up

I hope this helps! As always, I’m available for any type of question that you may have.

iOS Programming for .NET Developers Book Review

2013-03-09T01:21:00-08:00

Description: This book is a field guide for .NET developers exploring the foreign world of native iOS programming. It explains the iOS development platform by comparing and contrasting with tools, APIs, and concepts familiar to .NET developers.

My Review

Cliff notes review – Excellent book that gives you enough foundation to get started writing iOS apps! I would highly recommend it.

I recently read iOS Programming for .NET Developers by Josh Smith and I must say that it was a very enjoyable read. I am very familiar with Josh’s work in the XAML space with his Advanced MVVM book and his very popular MSDN article on the same subject. So as soon as I got the book, I knew that I would be reading something coming from a hardcore .NET (XAML) guy and was happy that he was sharing his experience moving to Objective-C with a .NET background. With that said, as with most of my book reviews, I tend to keep it to a few paragraphs and let the reader decide if they want to learn more about the book.

The first three chapters introduces you to the brand new world that you are about to enter – iOS software development. With that in mind, you need to be aware of several differences including: going from Visual Studio to XCode, Windows OS to the Mac OS, C# to Objective-C, etc... Some of the key takeaways that I received was learning the differences between native, Mono Touch (lets you use C# to develop iOS applications without learning Objective-C) and hybrid. I also appreciated the fact that he walked you through the Mac OS and provides the equivalent Mac OS keyboard shortcuts for things like cut, copy and paste. Chapter three is where it really begins to get interesting as we see the project templates for an iOS application and the Xcode IDE for the first time. Josh clearly explains how the work spaces differ from Visual Studio and even talks about source code control.

The next five chapters are all about going from C# to Objective-C. You’ll see things such as the iOS equivalent to C# Namespaces, using statements, methods, constructors, lambas and so forth. It’s brought together with nice little samples such as: “In C#, calling the method would look like this.” versus “Here is the way we’d do it in Objective-C.” An entire chapter is devoted to garbage collections as we all love how C# manages this for us. We quickly find out that we need to manage our own in Objective-C and Josh shows us exactly how to do that. The next few chapters are about fundamental differences that we must overcome such as going from System.* to NS*. Things such as strings, boxing, arrays and much more are also covered. My favorite chapter was going from XAML to UI-Kit. Josh even lays out the iOS equivalent of a XAML control in a nice, easy to read chart. He wraps up by showing you the Interface Builder, where you create your UI and do things such as change a button’s text color to the various event of a button like “Touch Down”. By the time you get to the end of Chapter 8, you will have a solid foundation on the differences between the languages.

Now that you have a solid foundation, Josh begins to fill in the missing pieces with all the necessary things modern mobile applications needs. Things such as calling web services, working with XML and JSON to inspecting HTTP traffic. He then dives into the core data framework which manages large sets of data and we are exposed to SQLite. The book wraps up with debugging techniques and unit testing, which we all know that no app is without bugs. Josh shows you the best way to track them down. He also gives you a compare and contrast between two popular unit test frameworks available.

All in all this book was well worth my time reading it and I thoroughly enjoyed Josh’s style of writing. I haven’t written my first app yet as I wanted to test the waters first and see what exactly I was getting myself into. This book will explore the differences for any .NET developer and let you make your own choice to jump in or jump out. I personally am very interested in the platform and would love to publish my first app regardless if I make any money from it or not. I just want to be aware of the various options mobile consumers have today. I am still very much in love my Windows Phone 8 device, but it never hurts to see what is on the other side!

Thanks Josh for the great book!

-Michael Crump

An Overview of the Windows Phone 8 SDK Article

2013-02-22T04:59:00-08:00

I have a new in-depth article published in print and online for CODE Magazine called, “An Overview of the Windows Phone 8 SDK”. If you're looking to get up to speed quickly with Windows Phone 8, then this is an article that you don’t want to miss.

See below for more information and a link to the online article.

Article Introduction

It didn’t take long after the introduction of Windows Runtime (WinRT, the set of APIs that allow Windows Store apps to communicate with the Windows 8 operating system), for Microsoft to unveil the next generation of its mobile operating system, Windows Phone 8, which conveniently includes some of the APIs coming directly from WinRT. It’s easy to imagine the APIs merging together at some point, as that would make writing applications for on-the-go devices such as tablets and mobile phones much easier.

This article discusses the improvements in the new Windows Phone 8 SDK, walks through the requirements to build an app on this new platform, and explores several great new features in this platform.

The Full Article

The full article is hosted on CODE Magazine and you can access it by clicking here (Registration Required) . Don’t forget to rate it and leave comments if you have any problems.

Setting up Unit Testing in Windows Phone 7 and 8

2013-02-12T02:02:00-08:00

Introduction

After reading the comments on this video and in forums, there seems to be a lot of confusion about how to setup “Unit Testing” in Windows Phone 7 and 8. It is actually very easy and I’ll show you step-by-step how to setup your first unit test in Windows Phone 7 or 8.

Let’s Get Started

Before we get started the Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 CTP 2 includes a project template for Unit Testing. The only downside is that this applies to WP8 only. The template will not show if you do not have the 8.0 SDK installed.

If you already have a Windows Phone 7 or 8 project that you want to Unit Test, then all you need to do is to create another Windows Phone 7 or 8 Project in the same solution as shown below. This project can be the standard, “Windows Phone App” template. You may want to give it a meaningful name such as UnitTestWP8App, etc.

Right click on the Unit Test WP8 App and select “Manage Nuget Packages”; now do a search for wptoolkit as shown below.

You’re going to want to install the Windows Phone toolkit and Windows Phone Toolkit Test Framework. Once that is complete, you will have the necessary files to Unit Test your WP8 projects. Not much has changed except a few new references and images have been added for you.

Navigate over to the MainPage.xaml.cs file and add in the following:

// Constructor
public MainPage()
{
    InitializeComponent();
    this.Content = UnitTestSystem.CreateTestPage();           
}

You will need to fix your using Statements as this uses: Microsoft.Phone.Testing.

If you set this project as your start-up project and deploy it to the emulator, then you will get the following screen:

If we hit the play button then we will find that we have no tests to run.

Let’s go ahead and add a reference to our real WP8 application by right clicking references and browsing to solution then projects as shown below.

Now that we have a reference to our main project, let’s go ahead and add a simple method that we will use with our Unit Test application.

Navigate to your MainPage.xaml.cs in your main project and add the following code snippet under the MainPage constructor.

public static int AddIntegers(int a, int b)
{
    return (a + b);
}

That was real hard wasn’t it? OK, this will simply add two numbers and return the value. (I hope you had that part figured out.)

Let’s return to our Unit Test project and creating a new folder called, “UnitTests” and add a class called “WP8UnitTest”.

Drop in the following code snippet (you may have to change your namespace if you didn’t name this project UnitTestWP8App)

using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
using System;
using System.Linq;

namespace UnitTestWP8App.UnitTests
{
    [TestClass]
    public class WP8UnitTest
    {
        [TestMethod]
        [Description("Check to see if MainPage.xaml get instantiated")]
        public void MainPageTest()
        {
            //Should return true
            MyAwesomeWP8App.MainPage MPage=new MyAwesomeWP8App.MainPage();
            Assert.IsNotNull(MPage);
        }

        [TestMethod]
        [Description("Check to see if AddIntegers works as desired")]
        public void AddIntegersTestShouldPass()
        {
            //Should Pass Since we are using Assert.IsTrue and 2+3=5
            var c=MyAwesomeWP8App.MainPage.AddIntegers(2, 3);
            Assert.IsTrue(c == 5);
        }

        [TestMethod]
        [Description("Check to see if AddIntegers works as desired")]
        public void AddIntegersTestShouldPass2()
        {
            //Should Pass since we are using Assert.IsFalse and 2+3 does not equal 7
            var c=MyAwesomeWP8App.MainPage.AddIntegers(2, 3);
            Assert.IsFalse(c == 7);
        }
    }
}

From here, we have 3 TestMethods that are going to run.

The First one just checks to see if the MainPage.xaml gets instantiated in our main application.
The Second one calls our AddIntegers method and adds two numbers and expect the result to be 5.
The Third one calls our AddIntegers method and adds two numbers and expects the result to NOT equal 7.

If we run our Unit Test Application now and hit the play button, then we can see all three tests passed.

We can also drill into them and get more details as well as email it or save it to isolated storage.

Wrap-up

I hope this helps you understand Unit Testing in WP8. As always, I’m available for any type of help that you may need. You may also download the completed project here.

Using Portable Class Libraries with Win 8 and WP8 and MVVM

2013-01-28T08:00:00-08:00

I have a new in-depth article published online at DZone called, “Using Portable Class Libraries with Windows 8 / Windows Phone 8 MVVM”. If you're looking to get up to speed quickly with PCL and how they may be used with the MVVM pattern, then this is an article that you don’t want to miss.

See below for more information and a link to the online article.

Article Introduction

Portable Class Libraries (PCL) support the cross-platform development of .NET Framework applications. With Portable Class Libraries, you can write portable assemblies that share code with Windows 8, Windows Phone, Xbox 360 and other .NET applications. If you choose not to use them, then you must target a single application type and rework the class library for other application types as needed. PCLs save this work by allowing you to build assemblies that are shared across different platforms. In this article, we are going to use the MVVM (Model-View-View-Model) pattern with Portable Class Libraries that target Windows 8 apps and more! Let’s get started.

The Full Article

The full article is hosted on DZone and you can access it by clicking here . Don’t forget to rate it and leave comments if you have any problems.

Create an off-line Installer for the Windows Phone 7.8 SDK

2013-01-23T03:19:00-08:00

Introduction

In case you missed the news today, the Windows Phone 7.8 SDK has been released. Thee first question posted on the blog was:

In which the following answer was given:

@Necroman - Unfortunately, we don't have an ISO/offline installer for the update. I'll inquire and see if we can get one spun up, but I wouldn't count on it short term. :)

Actually, there is…

It turns out, there is a way. I tweeted about a way to do it and thought I’d write a blog post to help remind myself and educate others.

First, you need to download the installer file located here. It is named WPExpress78_update.exe.

After the file is downloaded, open a command prompt and type the following:

WPExpress78_update.exe /layout c:\wp78temp

P.S. You can see a list of all available commands by typing WPExpress78_update.exe /?

That will pop open the following window:

Hit download and once it completes, you should have about 5.45 GB of data. (Note: This is every language and includes 7.1.1)

Now you can navigate over to this local folder and run the WPExpress78_update.exe file. Installation will begin like normal. You now have the ability to copy this whole directory to a USB thumb drive and install it as needed.

Notice the acquiring part only takes a few seconds and depending on your machine it applies the proper image.

Once everything completes then you are done.

You may now launch Visual Studio 2012 and select OS 7.1.

From the emulator drop down list you can see the two new emulator images added.

You may select Emulator 7.8 and run the app and see the following bare-bones start screen:

After pinning an item to the start screen, you now have the option to make it a smaller tile.

A few other things need to be in place in order to customize the tile and they can be found in this document.

I hope this helps!

-Michael

A Windows Phone 8 Project Template Without the Fluff

2013-01-22T02:44:00-08:00

Introduction

After I downloaded the Windows Phone 8 SDK, I noticed the first template called “Windows Phone App”. I was thinking that this template was a blank template as the image on the right hand side just shows a title and page name.

I would find out very quickly that I was wrong.

Examining the Windows Phone app Template

Upon launching it, the first thing that I noticed was that the MainPage.xaml contained blocks of comments.

Even the MainPage.xaml.cs contains blocks of commented code.

But it doesn’t end there, looking in the Solution Explorer, we can see the following files have been added automatically that are not in use without uncommenting the code listed earlier.

Two images under Tiles are automatically added to your project for the Iconic Tile Template, while the default template is Flip.
ApplicationGrid.png is used to help align your text to the Grid.
Resources is used for adding additional language support.
LocalizedStrings.cs provides access to string resources in AppResources.resx which is also not in use by default.

Also inside of this template, the support for large tile is disabled while the sample large Flip Tile image is included and the SplashScreenImage.jpg has been removed.

I Know, I Know

I know what you are thinking by now: this is guidance set forth by Microsoft to help developers deliver an exceptional Windows Phone 8 app. While I can’t agree more, sometimes I (and I assume other developers) want a blank Windows Phone 8 project template that looks similar to this:

Noticed that I’ve removed the unnecessary tiles, ApplicationGrid.png, Resources folder, LocalizedStrings.cs and removed the blocks of comments from MainPage.xaml and MainPage.xaml.cs. I’ve added by default support for large tile, which I think is one of the best new features in Windows Phone 8 and added back the SplashScreenImage.jpg for you to brand your application again.

My Version of the Blank Windows Phone 8 Template

As you can see from the screenshot, I have a template called, “Windows Phone App – Blank” which has a description of “A project for creating a Windows Phone App without any boilerplate code.

Download it

The template is available here to download (C# only – sorry VB). You will need to copy the zip file to the following directory (creating directories as needed) C:\Users\<your user name>\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#\Windows Phone\

(Sorry, I didn’t feel like creating a VSIX project)

Once you copy it over then it will look like the following in Windows Explorer:

You can now close and restart Visual Studio 2012 and see the new project template as shown earlier.

… and a Final Note

Now you have the best of both worlds… If you need the guidance provided by Microsoft then use the Windows Phone App Template. If you don’t need it (maybe for a quick demo) then use my template. Now what are you waiting for, go build that next app!

Silverlight Show Webinar on the New Features in the WP8 SDK Part 2

2013-01-20T08:00:00-08:00

Introduction

I recently delivered a webinar for SilverlightShow titled, “Deeper Dive into the Windows Phone 8 SDK” The recording of the webinar is now available on-demand. Continue reading below for more information on what topics were covered.

Webinar Summary:

This session is a deeper dive into the Windows Phone 8 SDK. We will dive right into Near Field Communication (NFC), Native Code (C++), In-App Store purchases and Wallet transactions. We will also look at what it takes to leverage the new Maps introduced in the Windows Phone 8 SDK. So, if you already have a basic knowledge of Windows Phone 8 and want to dig deeper, than this session is for you.

Wrap-up

Thanks everyone for attending and remember that the video, slides and demo code is all available on SilverlightShow right now.

Acer T232HL 23 inch Touchscreen Monitor Review for Windows 8

2013-01-14T08:00:00-08:00

Introduction

All of the talk lately has been about which laptop/slate developers are going to buy for Windows 8/Touchscreen development. I haven’t seen any developers talking about which touchscreen monitors they are going to be using on their main “beefed-up” development machine. In this blog post, I’m going to review the new Acer T232HL 23” Touchscreen monitor.

The Specs

23" Full HD edge-to-edge IPS touchscreen
10 Touch Points
1920 x 1080 resolution
100 million:1 contrast ratio - 5ms response time
60Hz refresh rate
178º horizontal, 178º vertical viewing angles
Integrated speakers
DVI - HDMI® - VGA - USB 3.0
Adjustable tilt
VESA mounting compliant
3-year limited warranty

My Existing Setup

My setup consist of a docked ThinkPad W520 with 2 23” LED monitors and all the normal peripherals one might expect. It is super-fast, includes a big SSD and even an external drive. As you might expect, neither of the monitors are touch screen and while doing touchscreen WPF, WinForms, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 work, I’m just using my mouse. Any time I need to use “pinch-n-zoom” or other gestures then I have to use the Simulator in VS2012 or keyboard shortcuts. So with this in mind, you can see why I would want to add at least one 23” touch screen to my existing setup.

Unboxing the Acer T232HL

The Acer arrived in the following box and I’ve included several screenshots of what is included.

As you can see below, it comes with the standard cables, VGA, DVI, HDMI, Audio Cables, Power Supply (2 pieces) and USB cord to plug the monitor into the Windows 8 PC as well as a printed monitor/DVD with the manual on it.

The screen is protected with this cover as well as another piece of plastic that you will take off once your monitor setup is complete.

The Connections

As you can see from the screenshot below, we have the following connections starting from left to right.

USB – to plug into your PC to get touch support.
VGA – Video out option
DVI – Video out option
HDMI – Video out option
Audio – For integrated speakers
Power – Notice it is not your standard monitor power input (3 prong)

You also get 3 additional USB 3.0 ports on the side of the monitor.

After Setup

After I removed my old monitor and setup the new one, not much changed in terms of my desktop appearance – but a major difference in screen clarity and touch support. For one, the touch support for Windows 8 worked out of the box. I immediately pulled up the charms bar and went to town. I also opened VS2012 and started the Windows Phone 8 Emulator and everything worked there (as expected).

Another shot, just to show you how thin this monitor is and the back view. (Sorry for the desk mess!)

Wrap-Up

FYI: I did a lot of research before getting this monitor, so you will see that I don’t have a lot to complain about. It is a rock-solid monitor for developers looking for a big touchscreen to use at home. I’ve listed out my pros/cons below.

PROS:

+ All of the standard options to hook this up to a computer exist (VGA, DVI, HDMI).

+ 10 Touch Points is great since I only have 10 Fingers. (More than enough for app testing)

+ Comes with 3 extra USB ports on the side of the monitor that are USB 3.0.

+ Certified with Windows 8 OS – works perfect using Windows Store Apps as well as everything else in the OS.

+ Nothing to install on Windows 8. – Just plug in the USB cable and you are done.

+ Rich Screen colors and very thin.

+ Nice Manufacture 3 year warranty.

+ $500 USD makes this monitor the best bang for the buck for monitors in the 23” range. Going up to the 24” starts at $1K and up.

CONS:

- I wasn’t very happy that it didn’t use the standard power supply that most monitors use. You have to use the one included. No big deal, but I couldn’t find any reason why they changed this.

- The USB Cable that shipped with the monitor was about 6 feet long. It would have been nice to of had a longer USB cable for extra room.

FINAL THOUGHT:

Great monitor! I’d definitely recommend it. (Disclaimer: No one is paying me to say that.) :)

Splash Screens in Windows Phone 8–Who moved my cheese?

2013-01-07T08:00:00-08:00

Introduction

You may have noticed that after creating a new Windows Phone 8 application that the SplashScreenImage.jpg does not exist in the project as it did in Mango. Since Windows Phone 8 Apps are “compiled in the cloud”, there isn’t a whole lot of reasons to create a splash screen as apps load super fast already. But that doesn’t mean you can’t add one back to the project to help identify your “brand”. If you would like to use a splash screen in your Windows Phone 8 project, then it may be beneficial to look at the resolutions supported by the SDK first.

Resolutions Supported by Windows Phone 8

Below is a list of screen resolutions supported by Windows Phone 8.

	Resolution	Ratio
WVGA (Wide Video Graphics Array)	480*800	15:9
WXGA (Wide eXtended Graphics Array) NEW	768*1280	15:9
720P NEW	720*1280	16:9

Back to Splash Screens

You can create one image and name it SplashScreenImage.jpg with a resolution of 768 x 1280 and call it done if you want. Windows Phone 8 will automatically scale the image depending on which phone is being used. However, you may also elect to create an image for each supported resolution (WVGA, WXGA, 720P to make it pixel perfect) and drop it in the root of your project with the following names.

SplashScreenImage.screen-WVGA.jpg
SplashScreenImage.screen-720p.jpg
SplashScreenImage.screen-WXGA.jpg

Take note here that if we add SplashScreenImage.jpg along with all the other images that Windows Phone 8 will automatically use it instead of the resolution specific images.

You will also need to set the Build Action to “Content” (which it did automatically when I added my image).

Switching Back to Resolutions

If you choose to only support certain resolutions, then you may opt-out by going into the WMAppManifest.xml and unchecking the resolution that your app is not going to support.

Getting the Phones Supported Resolution Through Code

It may be useful to find out the current phones resolution is through code in instances where you may want to load other assets later in the applications lifecycle. You can do this with the following code snippet and examining the ScaleFactor value.

private void Button_Click_1(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
      MessageBox.Show("Height : " + Application.Current.Host.Content.ActualHeight.ToString() + System.Environment.NewLine +
            "Width : " + Application.Current.Host.Content.ActualWidth.ToString() + System.Environment.NewLine +
            "Scale : " + Application.Current.Host.Content.ScaleFactor.ToString());
}

In this instance, I used the WVGA 512MB emulator option.

The Scale Factor simply gets the value by which the application content area scales its content. This is the easiest way to see which resolution the user is using. If the Scale Factor is 100 then it is WVGA, 150 is 720p, 160 then WXGA.

Or On the Phone Through Settings then About

Other Helpful Info

You can quickly check to see which resolution the image is inside of Visual Studio 2012 by double clicking on the image then clicking the properties button highlighted below. I’ve seen many presentations where the presenter left Visual Studio to show the width and height of the image. Just thought I’d share.

Conclusion

I hope this write-up helped as I’ve seen a lot of confusion around resolutions and splash screens in Windows Phone 8.

Thanks to Everyone for Helping me have a Great 2012.

2013-01-01T00:37:00-08:00

Thank you...

Seriously

I’ve been reflecting over 2012 and thinking of all the new people that I met and the new experiences that I’ve had. I thought of wrapping it all up into a year-end “wrap-up” blog post, but instead I just wanted to simply say, “Thank you”. Every last one of you – from my family, to my employer (Telerik), to my friends, to the various people and organizations that have let me speak and write for them, to my blog readers and various twitter followers. *whew* I hope I didn’t miss anyone!

I’ve been truly blessed in 2012 and to be honest with you, I would be nothing without the support from everyone. I’m extremely humbled to of had so many opportunities in 2012, and so many new ones opening up in 2013. From new speaking and writing opportunities and much much more! Again, I owe this all to you.

I wish each and everyone of you a great 2013 and thank you for helping me grow not only as a developer, but as a person.

-Michael Crump (@mbcrump)

What happens to Windows 8 Apps already Installed with a Current Expired Developer License?

2012-12-30T08:00:00-08:00

The Problem

Hey all, Just a short post here to let you know what I discovered recently. I logged onto my machine and noticed these 2 icons had an x at the bottom right-hand corner. I thought that is strange, I deployed these applications from Visual Studio 2012 with a valid developer license for Windows 8.

After clicking on the app, then it displayed this dialog box:

Then after I clicked on “Go to the Store”, it finally gave helpful information regarding my developer license for windows 8 apps had expired.

The Solution

Fire open the Windows 8 Solution in VS2012 and simply hit “I Agree” on the dialog box and you will be up and running in no time.

PS: If you don’t do this and already have a solution open the VS2012 does provide a helpful message as shown below.

Wrap-up

Thanks again for reading and Happy New Years!

Silverlight Show Webinar on An Overview of the New Windows Phone 8 SDK

2012-12-19T08:00:00-08:00

Introduction

I recently delivered a webinar for SilverlightShow titled, “An Overview of the New Windows Phone 8 SDK.” The recording of the webinar is now available on-demand. Continue reading below for more information on what topics were covered.

Webinar Summary:

The Windows Phone 8 SDK brings along many new features that could benefit your next Windows Phone app. Come take a look at several of these new features including: Tiles and Notifications, Changing Lock Screen, Speech Recognition and Multi-Resolution apps. We will also discover the additional tooling support and templates covered with this release. This is definitely a session to get you up to speed quickly with this new and exciting platform.

Wrap-up

Thanks everyone for attending and remember that the video, slides and demo code is all available on SilverlightShow right now.