Kunal-Chowdhury.com

Microsoft Surface won’t Turn ON - Now what to do?

2013-05-15T19:33:00.000+05:30

I just faced an issue with my Surface RT device. I was unable to turn on the device though it was completely charged. Though I had no idea about the issue but I was guessing about the Power Switch issue. Did a lot of stuffs, searching online etc. but nothing help. Finally I tweeted about the issue and got a reply which helped me to turn on the device. If you came to this page just because your Surface is not turning on, this post will help you. Solution Keep passion to check out few steps to know the status of your Surface RT or Surface Pro. It might be battery issue, power button issue or something internal. If it is an internal circuit issue, you will need servicing of your device. So, before taking your device to a service centre, check out the following points first: If you are unable to turn on your Surface, first make sure that, your device is not running out of battery. If your battery already drained out, charge it for at least 15 minutes and...

Microsoft confirms Windows 8.1 (Blue) Availability and Pricing

2013-05-14T21:21:00.000+05:30

Today Tami Reller, Chief Marketing Officer for the Microsoft Windows business confirms the general availability and pricing of Windows 8.1 (Blue) at the JP Morgan Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in Boston. The first public preview of next version of Windows 8 will be available during BUILD Conference going to happen at the end of June 2013. Tami Reller mentioned that the next version of Windows 8 will be available during BUILD conference this year in San Fransisco. She also mentioned that the first public preview version will be available on 26th June 2013. So, to get the hands on with the first public preview, we just have to wait for one more month only. According to Tami, the next version will be known as “Windows 8.1”, which we already know as “Windows Blue”. Tami Reller also announced that, Windows 8.1 will be freely available as update to existing Windows 8 and Windows RT consumers through Windows Store, but she didn’t...

Now I am a Nokia Developer Champion from India

2013-05-14T12:21:00.000+05:30

It’s the sunny morning when I woke up from bed and opened my Surface to check the mails and tweets those I received while I was sleeping. In the collection of all unread mail, I noticed a mail with the subject line that says “Welcome to Nokia Developer Champion”. At the very beginning I thought it as dream but now my dream comes true. Yes, I am now a Nokia Developer Champion from India and I am feeling very proud to announce it to you. Nokia Developer Champion is a recognition program for top mobile developers worldwide. Every quarter, Nokia invites outstanding members of the Nokia Developer community to accept a one-year membership in this program. Awardees are selected based on their technical expertise, their activities, contributions to the Nokia Developer Portal online community and offline services and communities worldwide. I have been nominated in this elite group for my continuous effort towards Windows Phone and Nokia Lumia...

How to Capture a Screenshot as File in Microsoft Surface?

2013-05-11T20:02:00.000+05:30

Last year we discussed “How to Capture a Screenshot as File in Windows 8?” which you will find useful in your desktop PC or laptop. You will also find that post useful in a Surface if you have a keyboard attached to it, because “Win + Print Screen” key combination is needed to capture the screen. What about Microsoft Surface which does not have a keyboard attach to it? In that case, a touch keyboard will be require to press the keys but that will fill half of the screen. I was facing it difficult in my Surface for quite a long time but recently I discovered the way to take the screenshot of the entire screen without using any key combinations. Hence I thought to share the tip in this blog post, so that, you will find it useful if you are using Microsoft Surface. If you are using Surface and want to take screenshot of the entire screen, you can press the following hard buttons in your device to capture the screen as file: Hold...

How to turn ON/OFF the Microsoft Two-Step Verification?

2013-05-07T08:00:00.000+05:30

In the last post “What is Two-Factor Authentication?” we discussed about various factors of authentication system including different examples. We also learnt about Knowledge Factor, Inherence Factor and Possession Factor. Microsoft recently added a second step authentication mechanism in all their accounts as an extra security layer. This post will guide you to turn ON/OFF this security layer. Though it’s an optional extra layer of security system for user’s safety, it’s not enable by default. If you want to enable it across all your Microsoft account, you can follow the below mentioned steps in order to activate the security layer. Once turned ON, it will ask you a second step verification code to authorize you to the system. Do Remember: This is an optional settings to safe guard your account against hackers. Once you turn it ON, you can turn it OFF again from the same settings page: https://account.live.com/proofs/Manage ...

What is Two-Factor Authentication?

2013-05-03T08:15:00.000+05:30

Two-factor authentication is a user authentication system where an user needs to provide two different factors to authorize the user’s identity. It is not a new concept and in many places we are knowingly or unknowingly using it for secure access. There could be multiple factors too and that known as Multi-factor authentication. Today in this post we will learn basics about this type of authentication system. As I mentioned above, two-factor and multi-factor authentications are not new. We are commonly using it in multiple places where we have strong security concerns. For example, your debit card or credit card. That also uses a two-factor authentication system. You can take example of your banking transactions too. Here you might ask me how these are related to such two-factor authentication. Ok, lets take the example of debit/ATM card that you use in ATM machines. You present the card which has a magnetic stripe which poses your card...

How to batch clean up the Visual Studio solution folder? (bin, obj etc.)

2013-05-01T08:00:00.000+05:30

Sometime the Visual Studio’s clean project command does not return as expected and maximum time people used to manually delete the bin, obj, Client Bin, Generated_Code directories to clean all the traces of previous build. Here I will share a small batch code which will help you to clean up those directories by just a single click. Tune it up if you want to add few more directories in the list. As a developer, you might be a victim of this issue where Visual Studio debugger stops working for your application and you have no other options than deleting the bin, obj folders. You might want to send your source code as an email attachment to someone but don’t want to include the compiled binaries or ReSharper cache. Also you might want to do a clean deployment of your code in web server where you want to make yourself confident that the previous compiled binary references don’t copied unknowingly. If you are doing at least one of the above...

#Win8Dev Tutorial: Programmatically download a File in WinRT apps

2013-04-29T08:30:00.000+05:30

If you are a Win8Dev and building a Windows 8/WinRT application, you might want to download a file asynchronously from a web location. The job is very easy in Silverlight and in this case too but you just need to know the way, the APIs and the configuration settings. Many developers already faced the difficulty to download a file in their WinRT apps and hence I thought to share the code with the API details in this post. API Info and Configuration Settings Microsoft exposes a sealed class named “BackgroundDownloader” present under “Windows.Networking.BackgroundTransfer” namespace, which provides APIs to download any file from a remote location asynchronously. Before going further with the code and the API, let us discuss about the configuration settings. Without proper configuration the code will not work. First of all, you have to open the “Package.appxmanifest” file and navigate to “Capabilities” tab. There you will see an option named...

Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook

2013-04-23T19:54:00.000+05:30

One of my friend, Abhishek Sur (Microsoft MVP, Client App Dev), recently published a book titled "Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook" covering basic usage of Visual Studio 2012 IDE, its various components and better utilization of the tool. This post is just an announcement of the book and introduce you with the content of it. If you are willing to buy, find herewith the links of different store. "Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook" is a step-by-step practical guide that teaches you how to work with new changes on technology under .NET. It provides in-depth analysis and expert advice on various elements of .NET, applying them in code using detailed practical examples. The book provides solutions to common development problems and helps you adapt to the latest technologies and get to grips with modern app development for the .NET 4.5 platform. This cookbook...

How to Hide the Format Toolbar of Telerik RadRichTextBox control?

2013-04-21T20:09:00.001+05:30

If you are using Telerik’s RadRichTextBox control in your Silverlight application, you might have noticed that the control exposes a format tool which pops up in the screen when you select some text inside the control. This is the same behaviour that you notice in Microsoft Word too. But for some reason, you might want to hide that toolbar if you are building an application like notepad. This small post will cover the same for you. Let’s assume a scenario where you are building a Silverlight application which acts like a notepad and there user should not be able to change the color and other formatting options of the selected text. This is very easily achievable using just a TextBox control. But think of an app where you want to provide some other options like inserting table or an image. The default TextBox control will not help you there. For this you have to use a RichTextBox control. Telerik’s RadRichTextBox control comes...

Solution: Unable to open Skype, you are already signed in

2013-04-18T12:15:00.000+05:30

These days Skype is a common platform for audio/video calling over internet. Many people uses it to connect with their family and beloved one, some other also uses it for business purpose to connect with their client. Recently I noticed frequent crash in Skype and when tried to reopen, it was unable to login but was showing a message that I am already signed in to system. This post covers the solution to that. It’s a common issue these days with Skype. Many times it crashes and starts this weird behavior and asks the user to sign out first though the user is not signed in. The message says: “We can’t open Skype. You are already signed in on this computer. Please sign out and try again”. If you check the Skype window you will notice that, you are not signed in and there are no option to do force sign out operation. Here is a screenshot of the same: These days I am facing this issue very frequently when Skype crashes. After...

Microsoft released Visual Studio 2012 Update 3 CTP 1 within 10 days

2013-04-16T20:53:00.000+05:30

It’s just 10 days when Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 RTM was released and now again, Microsoft released their next update pack named “Update 3”. This release is currently available under CTP (Community Technology Preview) first release. Find herewith more about this release i.e. list of changes and the link to download it. Keep in mind that, it’s a CTP release and not ready for production environment yet. Download Details 15th April 2013 is the another day when Microsoft released their first CTP version of the Update 3 pack of Visual Studio 2012. This includes few improvements in Agile planning and a lot of bug fixes. The update is available as an web installer and hence you must have to download that installer to begin with the process. If you want am offline/standalone installer of it to install the same in multiple devices or a future installation with out internet collection, you can create the offline installer very easily. Before that, download the web...

Add or Remove Context Menu Group in Telerik RadRichTextBox

2013-04-15T22:52:00.000+05:30

If you are working with the Telerik’s RadRichTextBox control for Silverlight, you might come to a situation where as per your business need you might have to customize the default context menu of the said control. If you are looking for an way to add or remove context menu group, this post will help you. Continue reading the post to understand the way this context menu has been structured. Once you understand the basics, it will be easy for you to do further modifications. Introduction On a sunny afternoon when I was gossiping with few of my friends in the cafeteria, one of my friend mentioned that, today he has a complex task creating a custom context menu for one of the Telerik’s Silverlight control named “RadRichTextBox”. Before going further, let me tell you that, RadRichTextBox control is part of the Telerik’s Silverlight Rad library and comes inside “Telerik.Windows.Controls.RichTextBoxUI” assembly. To use this control, you need three more...

How to integrate Infragistics InfoBox control in your WP app?

2013-04-12T08:02:00.000+05:30

As a WPDev, sometime we want to show a callout type information box or a notification popup within the Windows Phone application to the end user. Building such type of control needs a lot of effort before using that in an application. Infragistics came up with their own control to help the Windows Phone developers to save their effort building it from the scratch. Today we are going to discuss it here with step-by-step code snippet. Infragistics NetAdvantage library for Windows Phone provides a default control named InfoBox which you can use in your Windows Phone 7 and/or Windows Phone 8 applications to provide some information or notification to the user within the application window. Before going in depth, let me tell you in advance that, this control library is not free and before using it in your application, you have to purchase that product. Also, you can try this library by installing the Free Evaluation version by following this link:...

How to detect in Silverlight whether Network Connection is available?

2013-04-11T00:10:00.000+05:30

In your Silverlight application, you might want to detect whether network connection is available and then based on the result, you might want to do a service call or disable few buttons. This is a most wanted feature by the Silverlight developers. So if you are looking for code, this post will help you to understand the APIs and integrate the same in your Silverlight applications. The abstract class “NetworkInterface” present in the “System.Net” assembly under the “System.Net.NetworkInformation” namespace provides you information related to network interface. This class exposes a method named “GetIsNetworkAvailable()” which returns boolean value based on the network availability. Based on the returned value, you can easily do your stuffs like enabling/disabling buttons or do a service call. Here is the code snippet of the same stuff: if (System.Net.NetworkInformation.NetworkInterface.GetIsNetworkAvailable()) { ...

Infragistics announces The NetAdvantage Webinar series (April 23-25)

2013-04-10T07:41:00.000+05:30

Infragistics announces their NetAdvantage webinar series which will be held from 23rd April 2013 to 25th April 2013. The webinar series will cover most of their controls which includes Ignite UI, Windows Forms, XAML controls, NucliOS for iOS and Windows UI. This post will cover a brief about the agenda and a link for you to register to the webinar series. As the seats for this webinar is limited, register for it now. Excitement begins just one week before Infragistics unleashes the 13.1 version of NetAdvantage. They now came with superior end user experiences with quality tools to create better, more modern applications for the developers. In the latest release of NetAdvantage, experience the latest in Mobile and Touch capabilities, with the promise that only NetAdvantage offers both native and hybrid controls, in addition to established toolsets, that make it easy to design and build enterprise-ready applications for every major platform and device. ...

Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 (RTM) now available for download

2013-04-05T12:16:00.000+05:30

Just 2 months after the release of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 CTP release, Microsoft released the final version of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 which also includes a single Blend version that can be used to build apps for Silverlight, WPF, Windows Phone and Windows 8 Store etc. The update is freely available for you to download from Microsoft site. I am going to share the direct link here for you to get easy access link. Download Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 If you are already using Visual Studio 2012, it is recommended to download this update to add the new & improved tools and capabilities to your Visual Studio 2012 IDE. This update also has a cumulative updates of all VS 2012 IDE bug fixes. Here is the complete list of Visual Studio 2012 products with this Update 2: Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Express...

How to keep the Win8 Display ON during audio/video playback?

2013-04-02T12:30:00.000+05:30

Are you a Windows 8 Application Developer? Are you building an app like audio/video player or game which needs to keep the display active when user is inactive in the system? Then you came to a right place where we will discuss how to keep the display on while idle. This post details about the Windows 8/Windows RT API usage and code snippet to request the system to keep the display on. Continue reading to know more about it. Microsoft exposes a sealed class named “DisplayRequest” present under the “Windows.System.Display” namespace, which provides APIs to interact with the display. It exposes two methods called “RequestActive()” and “RequestRelease()” which asks the Windows 8 or Windows RT system to keep the display on or off based on user’s activity. When you call “RequestActive()”, this will make sure that the display remains ON when user is inactive in the system. It is mainly require when you are building a video application...

How to change the Windows 8 Lock Screen Programmatically?

2013-03-31T00:41:00.000+05:30

Are you a Windows 8 or Windows RT user? Are you looking for a code to change your Windows 8 lock screen programmatically? Then this post will be definitely helpful for you. Just follow the simple steps to write an application by which you can change it easily. Windows 8 already exposes settings panel to change the lock screen of the Windows, but this post will help you to programmatically access that using the exposed APIs. If you are a Windows 8 user, you already know about Windows 8 Lock Screen. If you want to change the lock screen, Microsoft exposes a settings panel directly from the Charm bar under “PC Settings” screen. There you can choose the predefined images or you can browse to your library to change it manually. There are few applications like Windows 8 Bing app, which provides you button to set Bing image as the lock screen background. But what about accessing that programmatically? A Windows 8 application developer might think...

How to Detect WP Device Infos using DeviceExtendedProperties?

2013-03-28T08:00:00.000+05:30

Almost two years ago we discussed about “Microsoft.Phone.Info.DeviceStatus” class to retrieve Windows Phone device information in your application. In addition to those, there are some more APIs to fetch more details which is available as extended properties set. Today in this post, we will learn about the API and the way to fetch those additional details in your application. Continue reading to know more about it. Know about the API Earlier in the post “Windows Phone 7 (Mango) Tutorial - 15 - Detecting Device Information”, we learnt how to detect the device information using the APIs available in the SDK. We also learnt how to detect whether any Keyboard has been installed with the device, whether the device is running under battery or using any external power supply. In addition to this, we also learnt the way to detect about the memory of the device and other device information. In Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 SDK, addition to...