Blog-Microsoft.fr

New blog address fabienlavocat.com

fabien lavocat — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:38:58 -0800

January 2012, new year, time for new resolutions, for me it’s also time for a new blog. I couldn’t deal anymore with the problems of my old web site host. I can’t switch from ASP.NET 2.0 to ASP.NET 4.0. It means impossible to update BlogEngine to the last version, and impossible also to change the design of the site. So let me introduce my new domain fabienlavocat.com (yes I know it was very easy to find this name). The content of this new blog will be exclusively in English, considering that I live in California for more than 15 months now. I can’t stop talking in French at work but I can’t stop on the web. I’ll try to post articles, code samples, tips, interesting packages… mainly for WPF and Windows Phone, basically because I love these technologies. Even if a lot of people around me think that Windows Phone is not enough good compare to an iPhone or Android, it’s not my opinion, and if we (.NET developers) don’t create content, applications for this OS it will not help Microsoft to push it more and more.

Please change your bookmarks and favorites for the new address of my blog: http://www.fabienlavocat.com

Mobile bug tracking with BugSense

fabien lavocat — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:31:24 -0800

Today I’m gonna talk about a new service I discovered yesterday, bugsense. This free tool is used to report crash of your mobile applications (iPhone, Android, Google AppEngine, BlackBerry or Windows Phone 7) and send to the developer a notification, then a web tracking system will help you to know what is needed to fix. You’ll ask me, why this tool is free? The business model (according to the FAQ) is that some future features will be available only with a premium account.

Let’s talk about features.

From your interface, your dashboard, you can track the number of exceptions raised by your applications every days, weeks, months. You can also track the list of bug you already fixed and the pending list.

As you can see, for an exception, you can see the stack trace, and a lot of information concerning the device, like the OS version, the country, the application version, the application name… A bug has two states, Unresolved and resolved. It allows you to track, filter and sort easily what you have to do for the next release of your application.

You can also invite other developers of your team to track the bugs in the same dashboard.

How to implement it into your applications.

It is very very easy! Do you know NuGet? Just install the package BugSense for Windows Phone into your project.

You’ve first to initialize the service by providing the application handled and your API Key (This key is given when you create a new application on the BugSense dashboard). Update the constructor of the class App.

/// <summary>
/// Constructor for the Application object.
/// </summary>
public App()
{
    // Define the instance of BugSense
    BugSenseHandler.Instance.Init(this, API_KEY);

    // Global handler for uncaught exceptions. 
    BugSenseHandler.Instance.UnhandledException += Instance_UnhandledException;
}

Then we have to modify the way to raise unhandled exception raised by your application. You can remove the line UnhandledException += Application_UnhandledException; from the constructor, and we will create our own handler.

// Code to execute on Unhandled Exceptions
private void Instance_UnhandledException(object sender, BugSenseUnhandledExceptionEventArgs e)
{
    // Use BugSense to report the exception
    BugSenseHandler.HandleError(e.ExceptionObject);

    if (System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached)
    {
        // An unhandled exception has occurred; break into the debugger
        System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();
    }
}

So now, when a unhandled exception is raise in your application, this popup is displayed. When the user click OK, a report is sent to your dashboard, and an email is sent to your mailbox (if you activated the notification). You can, of course, customize the popup and the error message.

So, if you want to try the service BugSense for free, check it out http://www.bugsense.com/

Windows Phone 7.1 Mango SDK is now available

fabien lavocat — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 11:14:46 -0800

Microsoft published today the RTM of Windows Phone 7.1 SDK (aka Mango). If you already used the RC version to publish your app, there is no need to recompile or resubmit your application on the Marketplace. And as I said yesterday, if you want to make money with your applications, you can now use the Microsoft Advertising SDK which is included in this SDK in 11 more countries.

So, do you see any reason to not develop for Windows Phone 7 Mango???

Download the Web installer for Windows Phone 7.1 SDK, you can also download the full installer (.iso).

Windows Phone 7 Mango is available for everybody

fabien lavocat — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 17:58:04 -0800

Microsoft released today, Tuesday, September 27, 2011 the update of Windows Phone 7: Mango. This update is available for 98% of existing Windows Phone Customers. To see the schedule of the update, look at this website: United States – International.

But the release of the mobile OS does not come alone. They also published the Web edition of the Marketplace. You can view and buy applications and games without using Zune software! You can access to the marketplace here: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/marketplace

Don’t forget to have a look at my other website MaWP7 and to download the last version (Mango ready) of the application Earthquakes.

If you’re a mobile developer, but not based in the USA, you will also enjoy the following news. Microsoft Advertising solution is now available for 11 more countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and United Kingdom.

Microsoft BUILD in Anaheim, CA from Sept. 12 to 16

fabien lavocat — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:02:58 -0800

Microsoft is about to reveal a plenty of information about the next version of Windows, codename Windows 8, but also Visual Studio 2012, Expression Blend vNext, and of course the .NET Framework 4.5.

You’ll find more detail about what will be probably announced at BUILD on Mary-Jo Foley’s blog for ZDNet. I said “probably” because Microsoft didn’t say anything about the schedule of the sessions, just some basic information on the Agenda like there are 2 keynotes, one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday… Beside the technical event, it is the occasion for me and all developers from all around the world to do networking, exchange ideas, opinions, and business cards

On my side I’m very interested to see the next version of Visual Studio and Expression Blend. To know what will be the possibilities for the developer to create new applications for Windows 8. And I hope, the answer that every single WPF / Silverlight developer is asking, Are WPF and Silverlight dead? Of course the answer is NO WPF and Silverlight are not dead, but to here that from Microsoft might be a high relied for the .NET developer community.

So if you attend to BUILD, let me know on my twitter @FabienLavocat and we can have meet and have a drink!

Windows Phone 7 Toolkit release August 2011

fabien lavocat — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 09:52:54 -0800

Microsoft just released the August 2011 version of the Silverlight toolkit for Windows Phone 7. This release is dedicated to Mango developers, so you’ll need the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK Development (Mango) to use it. So first, if you did not do it already, download and install the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK. Then you can download the Silverlight toolkit for Windows Phone via Codeplex.

The new controls of this release are:

Smooth new LongListSelector designed for Windows Phone 7.1 OS
MultiselectList
LockablePivot
HubTile
ExpanderView

LocalizedResources
DateTimeConverters

DateTimePickers

HeaderedItemsControl
PhoneTextBox

ListPicker supports multiselect

Do not forget to check the list of my applications available on the MarketPlace. MaWP7 Facebook page, MaWP7 Twitter account.

My Applications for Windows Phone 7

fabien lavocat — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:08:28 -0800

I released last week, a new web site to present my applications for Windows Phone 7.
I already published 3 applications:

Earthquakes: List of earthquakes all around the world on your Windows Phone 7 thanks to the data provided by US Geological Survey. An update is published on the marketplace, but still in the certification process…
Light 7: Turn your phone into a flashlight to find your way in a dark room, unlock your door on a dark night, read a map... This application will also help you to detect dead pixels on your phone!
Gratuity: Helps you to calculate the tip when you are at a restaurant with your friends. You just enter the amount of the bill and the number people to calculate the price per person.

I’m currently working on the next version of each applications, and on some new projects.
So check it out here: http://www.mawp7.com

Also, I created a new Facebook page, and a Twitter account to follow the activity of the development.

Application Earthquakes - Windows Phone 7 - Think Globalization and Localization!

fabien lavocat — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 09:44:08 -0800

Earthquakes was my first application published on the Microsoft Marketplace for the Windows Phone 7, and like all first things, it is not perfect. I didn’t think about my dear friends in France and in all other countries with a non English Windows Phone 7 OS on their phone.

When you code an application which can be published all around the world, you must think Globalization and Localization!!! (Shame on me, it was my job at Microsoft) So would like to use my blog to share with you my experience on the development for Windows Phone 7 and other technologies of course.

My first advice is to be very careful when you try to parse numeric values like Double. In my application I get the magnitude of a earthquake in a String value, and I parse it with the function Double.Parse(magnitude) where magnitude is a String and contains something like “5.2”. For an English OS, no problem, but for a French OS, we don’t write “5.2” to represent a decimal, but “5,2” so the Parsing function doesn’t understand and raise an exception. So to fix this issue, you must use the function Parse with a IFormatProvider parameter. Double.Parse(magnitude, new CultureInfo(“en-US”))

So please now, download the application Earthquake v1.1 on the marketplace.

My first Windows Phone 7 application on the Marketplace - Earthquakes

fabien lavocat — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:35:16 -0800

Yesterday I published my first application on Microsoft Marketplace. This application named Earthquakes lists all recent earthquakes all around the world, and display them on a map. This kind of application is very interesting, especially if, like me, you live in a seismic area like San Francisco in California. You can download it for free with the Zune software: http://twlr.me/B5P

Here are some screenshots of the application. I’ll add later new features like more details about the event, a button to publish on Twitter / Facebook…

Telerik - RadDragAndDropManager WPF Q2 2011 and backwards compatability

fabien lavocat — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 11:38:59 -0800

If you use Telerik components (like me) for your applications, you probably downloaded the last version (Q2 2011) to have access to the new control RadBreadcrumb. But if you use the RadDragAndDropManager to manage easily your Drag & Drop features, you’ll notice that it doesn’t work anymore. Why? Because Telerik implemented some changes to this control into this last edition of the WPF package. Have a look at the Release History for WPF Q2 2011.

So here is the changes you have to implement to have a backward compatibility of your code with the last edition of the controls. You need to implement those changes in the constructor of your Page / UserControl:

public MyPage()
{
	// Uses legacy execution mechanism. through RadDragAndDropManager class.
	// This option is provided for backwards compatability.
	RadDragAndDropManager.ExecutionMode = DragExecutionMode.Legacy;

	InitializeComponent();

	this.Unloaded += (sender, e) =>
		{
			RadDragAndDropManager.ExecutionMode = DragExecutionMode.Default;
			RadDragAndDropManager.Initialize();
		};

}

Silverlight 5 beta

fabien lavocat — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:51:58 -0800

Before starting to talk about the last edition of Silverlight, I’d like to thank Microsoft (yes again), because on April 1st, I received an email which nominate me as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional on Client Application Development (WPF, Silverlight…).

But this year is different than the previous one, because since several months I live in San Francisco, CA, so I’m now MVP North America, and you’ll see me at different events in the Bay Area.

So let’s talk about Silverlight 5. Between April 12 and 14, it was the MIX 2011 in Las Vegas, NV. This event gathers developers, designer… and is used by Microsoft to share new products like Silverlight, Expression… The theme of this edition was mainly about Silverlight 5 and Windows Phone 7 Mango (The update of Fall / Winter 2011). You can watch all Keynotes and sessions directly on Channel 9.

It was the occasion for Microsoft to spread on the web the last Beta version of Silverlight 5. This release include a lot of new features like some improvements on Data Bindings, the support of 3D APIs and more general features / improvements. You can see this list on Tim Heuer blog.

To download Silverlight 5 you will need to install the SP1 of Visual Studio 2010 (but I’m sure you already did it ). Download Microsoft Silverlight 5 Beta Tools for Visual Studio 2010 SP1. And Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5.

Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is available

fabien lavocat — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 10:39:07 -0800

Today, Tuesday, March 10 at 10 AM PST, Microsoft announced the availability of Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 for all MSDN Subscribers.

Download Visual Studio 2010 SP1 from MSDN.

If you want to know what’s new in this Service pack, you can read the great post of Jason Zander about the SP1 Beta.

Visual Studio 2010 International Survey

fabien lavocat — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:56:41 -0800

In order to improve the quality of Visual Studio Microsoft ask you to participate in this survey. The International team is very interested in your opinion so that we can provide you with products and services that better fit your needs.

To answer to this survey in English.
To answer to this survey in French.

Sondage Visual Studio 2010 International

fabien lavocat — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 16:54:48 -0800

Afin d’améliorer la qualité de Visual Studio Microsoft vous demande de bien vouloir participer à ce sondage. L’équipe internationale est très à l’écoute de vos opinions, afin de pouvoir vous fournir des produits et des services qui correspondent plus à vos besoins.

Pour répondre a ce sondage en Francais.
Pour répondre a ce sondage en Anglais.

Expression Design 5 - January 2011 Preview

fabien lavocat — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 11:53:56 -0800

Microsoft has released one week ago ,the last preview of Expression Designer 5, named January 2011 Preview.

This tool permits to graphic designers to import their creations from Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator to Expression Blend to include them into WPF or Silverlight applications.

This preview includes two new features which are:

The importation of Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) files.
Enable to do multiple selections in the different layers of the project.

Download this preview here. It expires on 6/30/2011. Please help the Expression Design team by reporting any technical issues.

Telerik - Docking controls for WPF - Issue with the InvertedBooleanConverter

fabien lavocat — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 13:22:34 -0800

I’m working with Telerik controls from WPF, especially with the Docking features. This are very easy to use controls. I’ve noticed a small issue into the converter InvertedBooleanConverter. The behavior is not connect in TwoWay mode. In OneWay mode you received the inverted value, that is correct. But not in TwoWay mode. It is because the ConvertBack method is not well implemented into the version 2010.3.1110.35 of the tools. I reported this bug to Telerik, and it should be fixed soon. The workaround I suggest is to re implement the converter in your project, until Telerik implement the fix.

Here is the code of the converter:

public class InvertedBooleanConverter : IValueConverter
{
    public Object Convert(Object value, Type targetType, Object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
        return ((value is Boolean) && !((Boolean)value));
    }

    public Object ConvertBack(Object value, Type targetType, Object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
        return ((value is Boolean) && !((Boolean)value));
    }
}

WPF - How to change the selection color for a ListBox

fabien lavocat — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 09:31:40 -0800

When you use a Listbox and all its derivate class (like the ListView), you probably want to change the selection color without editing all the style of the control. To do it, it is very easy, you have just to change two system colors values: SystemColors.HighlightBrushKey and SystemColors.ControlBrushKey and apply them to the control.

To implement it, just add to resources of the ListBox control lines below, depending on what you want to do:

<ListBox.Resources>
    <SolidColorBrush x:Key="{x:Static SystemColors.ControlBrushKey}" Color="Transparent" />
    <SolidColorBrush x:Key="{x:Static SystemColors.HighlightBrushKey}" Color="Green" />
</ListBox.Resources>

Here is the result:

New release of the TwoStatesButton for WP4

fabien lavocat — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 15:08:29 -0800

I just release the version 1.1 of the control TwoStatesButton for WPF 4. This update include a new way to use templates with WPF. The control is now based on Toggle Button like suggested by Julien Corioland .

You can download this control on Codeplex for free .

New CodePlex project TwoStatesButton for WPF 4

fabien lavocat — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 11:23:28 -0800

I just released, an hour ago, a new project on CodePlex. This project, TwoStatesButton, is a WPF control which looks like to the “switch button” of the iPhone. You can have the same behavior as the iPhone version, with ON / OFF values, and you can specify left and right values. I plan to add more features soon…

This very simple project is realized in C# 4 / WPF 4. I hope it will be useful for you.
To download example and the source code, go to http://twostatesbutton.codeplex.com/

New service release for Silverlight 4.0.51204

fabien lavocat — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 17:57:27 -0800

Microsoft has published a new service release for Silverlight 4 last week. This update is (or will be soon) provided by Windows update. For you, developers, please download and install the Silverlight Developer Runtime 4.0.51204, to develop applications with tools up to date.

The description of the fixes is described in the KB2477244:

Issue 1

Foreign diacritical marks do not display in a TextBox control or a RichTextBox control in an Out-of-Browser (OOB) application on a Macintosh computer.
Note: A diacritic is a special mark added to a letter to indicate a different pronunciation, stress, tone, or meaning. Acute and grave accents, tildes, and cedillas are examples of diacritics.

Issue 2

Before you apply this update, a Silverlight 4 OOB application can enable an update only when the application is signed with matching certificates that have not expired.
This update relaxes this restriction. After you apply the update, an OOB application can enable an update if the following conditions are true:

Both the new application and the old application have valid signatures.
The new application is signed with a trusted certificate.
The Subject and the Issuer of the certificate that is used to sign the new application match those of the certificate that is used to sign the old application.

How to use EmailComposeTask for Windows Phone 7

fabien lavocat — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 11:27:13 -0800

A last post about how to use tasks in Windows Phone 7. The previous was on how to use the PhoneCallTask task to dial numbers with your phone. Let’s do a quick demonstration on the EmailComposeTask task. It allows to create an email and fill all fields (To, Cc, Subject, Body). It is very easy to use it!

/// <summary>
/// Send an email.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="to">To.</param>
/// <param name="cc">Cc.</param>
/// <param name="subject">Subject.</param>
/// <param name="body">Body.</param>
public void SendEmail(String to, String cc, String subject, String body)
{
    // Create the task
    EmailComposeTask emailComposeTask = new EmailComposeTask();

    // Fill all fields
    emailComposeTask.To = to;
    emailComposeTask.Cc = cc;
    emailComposeTask.Subject = subject;
    emailComposeTask.Body = body;

    // Display the mail application
    emailComposeTask.Show();
}

You can call this method like this:

SendEmail("fabien.lavocat@blablabla.com", "windows@blablabla.com", "Your blog", "Nice blog!");

So easy! I can’t show you what is displayed on the phone screen when you use this task because you need to create an email account on the phone, but it is not possible on the emulator… If you try anyway, you’ll see this screen:

How to use PhoneCallTask for Windows Phone 7

Fabien Lavocat — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 23:00:00 -0800

The previous post was a quick presentation of all tasks available for the development on Windows Phone 7. Now I’ll focus on the specific task PhoneCallTask. You can use this class in your development to call someone directly without having (for the user) to enter the number. Of course you can’t press the button “Call” by code…

Let’s use only one short method:

/// <summary>
/// Call the specified person.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="name">Name of the person to call.</param>
/// <param name="number">Phone number of the person to call.</param>
private void Call(String name, String number)
{
    PhoneCallTask phoneCallTask = new PhoneCallTask();
    phoneCallTask.PhoneNumber = number;
    phoneCallTask.DisplayName = name;
    phoneCallTask.Show(); // Display the dial screen
}

And when you call it, you should see the result:

Presentation of the namespace Microsoft.Phone.Tasks

fabien lavocat — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 15:10:48 -0800

First blog post from San Francisco, CA. I didn’t publish a lot of content here because I still don’t have a computer at home (yes, it’s weird). BTW, I’m working a bit on a Windows Phone 7 project, and I had to use several Tasks from the namespace Microsoft.Phone.Tasks. Let’s see what kind of tasks we can use:

CameraCaptureTask: Capture a photo using the camera.
EmailAddressChooserTask: Obtain an email address by the contact book.
EmailComposeTask: Prepare an email to send.
For the Market Place:
MediaPlayerLauncher: Launch the media player.
PhoneCallTask: Ask the use to call a specified number.
PhoneNumberChooserTask: Choose a number from the address book.
PhotoChooserTask: Choose a picture from the photo album of the mobile.
SaveEmailAddressTask: Save an email address to the address book.
SavePhoneNumberTask: Save a phone number to the address book.
SearchTask: Launch the web search application.
SmsComposeTask: Compose a new SMS.
WebBrowserTask: Launch a web browser.

To use any of this tasks you must import the namespace Microsoft.Phone.Tasks. Then you have to create an instance of the task, set values to the different properties and call the function Show().

Nouveau départ, nouvelle vie, direction San Francisco, CA

Fabien Lavocat — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:17:00 -0800

Image taken by David Liu on June 2nd 2005. Source Wikipedia.

C’est officiel, je viens de quitter mon travail d’Ingénieur Multimédia chez TMM Communication après plus d’un an à travailler sur de nombreux projets sur les technologies Microsoft, Brightsign et Scala. J’ai eu l’occasion de développer sur des technologies comme ASP.NET 2.0, des Services Windows mais également WPF 4, Silverlight 4 et j’en passe ! Ma destination, San Francisco en Californie, dans la société Radiant Logic Inc, comme développeur Silverlight. Rapidement, Radiant Logic est une société éditrice de logiciels spécialisé en virtualisation de services d’identités. Je vais faire partie de l’équipe en charge de transformer l’intelligence de la société qui est actuellement en Java, vers la plateforme .NET pour répondre à la demande des clients.

Offre d’emploi - Développeur .NET :

Je vais profiter de ce post pour vous proposer de rejoindre une équipe dynamique, motivée et extrêmement intelligente pour travailler sur de supers projets. Donc si vous êtes développeur C#, WPF, Silverlight, passionné par les nouvelles technologies, que vous souhaitez faire partie de projets sur des tables Microsoft Surface ou des interfaces tactiles, rejoignez l’équipe de TMM.

Nous recherchons pour consolider notre équipe pour répondre aux besoins de nos clients, un développeur (h/f) Microsoft ayant des compétences confirmés dans le développement de solution en Framework .NET 4, ASP.NET C#, WPF, Silverlight.
Compétences supplémentaires : SQL Server, Surface.

De formation supérieure en informatique (minimum BAC+2), vous avez déjà une expérience en développement d'au moins 2 années. Vous êtes autonome en développement .NET.

Merci de contacter Michel Baronnier à michel.baronnier [@] tmmcom.fr

Suivez en direct la grande finale de la compétition d’applications Windows Phone 7

Fabien Lavocat — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 01:00:00 -0800

Aujourd’hui, Jeudi 7 Octobre, à partir de 11h00, aura lieu la finale de la compétition d’applications pour Windows Phone 7, avec la présence de Steve Ballmer. Les 7 meilleures équipes de développement devront présenter chacune leur application devant un jury composé de Steve Ballmer (CEO Microsoft Corporation), Pierre Olivier Carles (CEO Kipost et Labotec), Jacques Antoine Granjon (CEO Vente-privée.com), Ouriel Ohayon (Cofondateur AppsFire et Isai), Marc Simoncini (CEO Meetic et Jaina), Bruno Vanryb (CEO Avanquest) et enfin Xavier Niel (PDG et fondateur de Iliad).

Un petit soutient à mon ami Julien Dollon et son application Ahead, regardez le teaser de leur application.

Donc pour regarder le live, c’est sur cette même page :