Windows 8 Metro: Something about application life-cycle(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 5 days, 14 hours ago

Also if currently you are probably running Windows 8 on a virtual machine or luckily on a computer, there is not any doubt that this new operating system and especially the metro-style interface is dedicated to touch enabled devices like tablets. The plans of Microsoft infact include the new WOA keywork where the acronym stands for Windows On ARM that is the aim of making available this interface on a wide set of mobile devices that currently embrace this successful processor architecture. Running on a tablet does not only imply a different input interface like the touch screen, but also it requires a careful use of system resources that are not always large on this kind of device. This is the reason why metro-style applications have an application lifecycle that is mostly similar to the Windows Phone than of classical desktop apps. read more...

1 comment |category: Windows 8 |Views: 41

tags: windows8 another

Windows 8 Metro: Starting your first App from scratch(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 1 month, 8 days ago

After the first article in this series, where Andrea Boschin briefly discussed about design aspects of the new Metro interface, involving simplicity, flatness, emptiness and the pillars of this new beautiful paradigm, as promised, it is now time to start exploring the tools available to start create your applications. read more...

add a comment |category: Windows 8 |Views: 89

tags: windows8 another

Windows 8 and the future of XAML: Part 5: More contracts in WinRT/Win8(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 1 month, 8 days ago

In the previous article, we’ve introduced contracts in Windows 8. To quickly recapitulate, a contract allows Metro style applications in Windows 8 to communicate which each other or with Windows, without there being a hard reference between the participants of the communication. We’ve seen how the search contract allows applications to open themselves up to Windows so they can be search. There’s of course a contract that specifies how this searching is to be done: an application has to follow the rules specified in the contract so that Windows can communicate with the app in the way it needs to do. In this article, we’ll dive some more in contracts, more specifically, the share contract. read more...

add a comment |category: Windows 8 |Views: 66

tags: windows8 another

Windows 8 and the future of XAML: Part 4: Contracts in WinRT/Windows 8(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 1 month, 16 days ago

In the previous article of this series, Gill Cleeren wrote the first lines of code for WinRT. The main message was that although WinRT is a new API, we can still use our familiar languages to create Metro style applications. We have used the XAML/C# combination, but it’s perfectly possible to use XAML/VB or XAML/C++ as well. We’ll be using more of the API in the coming articles but in this article, we’ll focus on some specifics around contracts, more specifically, the Search contract. Contracts enable Metro applications to communicate with each other or with Windows itself without there being a hard reference in place. read more...

add a comment |category: Windows 8 |Views: 103

tags: windows8 another

Windows 8 Metro: Create your apps with simplicity in mind(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 1 month, 22 days ago

Starting with this article, I aim to begin a new series based on my evolving experience with the new Windows 8 Metro Applications. As few people knows I have a graphical background that lives side by side with my programmer soul. During this series I would like to discover most of the wonderful tools behind Metro applications but in this article I would like to briefly switch off my programmer side to take in serious consideration the design aspects behind Metro. read more...

add a comment |category: Windows 8 |Views: 4

tags: windows8 another

Mastering LOB Development for Silverlight 5: Out of Browser (OOB) Apps(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 1 month, 22 days ago

This is a free chapter of the book "Mastering LOB Development for Silverlight 5: A Case Study in Action", published at SilverlightShow. The focus of this chapter is Out of Browser (OOB) Applications. read more...

add a comment |category: Silverlight |Views: 1

tags: Silverlight another

Developing for a multitude of clients, Part 4(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 2 months, 5 days ago

Welcome to the fourth part of this article series on strategies for designing your application for a multitude of different clients. In the first part, we’ve looked into the business case & some general concerns, and in the second part, we made a choice for a service layer: WCF RIA Services. In the third part, we’ve seen how we can use MEF for on demand loading & code reuse across different clients. However, I left out a few things in that article: loading the Views on demand (as it requires extensions to the Silverlight Navigation framework to navigate to Views in an assembly that’s loaded on demand), and loading multiple assemblies on demand (as we need an async component loader for that, to ensure we can load these assemblies at the same time instead of one by one). This article will deal with these two concerns. read more...

add a comment |category: Silverlight |Views: 71

tags: Silverlight another

Creating the SilverlightShow Windows Phone App: Part 1(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 2 months, 5 days ago

During the course of developing the SilverlightShow Windows Phone application, we thought it would be a nice idea to share some of the experiences with the SilverlightShow readers, because it is a nice example of discussing a real-world application, with real-world problems (and solutions :)). The idea of this mini-series of articles was born, where you will discover both details about the development process as well as some technical challenges we came across. This first part will deal with the process itself, so prepare for some more text and less code (read: no code) than usual. read more...

add a comment |category: Windows Phone 7 |Views: 3

tags: Phone Windows another

Consume JSON with Windows Phone: a seamless solution(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 2 months, 12 days ago

One of the growing needs of these days, is the requirements of exposing services that are available to multiple platforms. This request come obviously from the increasing availability of a number of mobile platforms that is forcing companies to adopt strategies to decrease the complexity and use technologies that are able to respect the verb "write once and use everywhere". read more...

add a comment |category: Windows Phone 7 |Views: 70

tags: Phone Windows another

Interview with Billy Hollis, Presenter in a VSLive! Las Vegas Workshop(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 2 months, 25 days ago

In this SilverlightShow interview, we talk with Billy Hollis – the presenter at the most-awaited workshop at Visual Studio Live! Las Vegas conference (March 26-30, 2012) - ‘Creating Today’s User Experiences - An Entry Point for Developers’. As we have announced, SilverlightShow is the Social Media Premiere Partner for this conference and we’ll be sending one SilverlightShow member to this conference for free. read more...

add a comment |category: Visual Studio |Views: 2

tags: VisualStudio another

Recording of Webinar 'Windows Phone 7.5 Background Workers'(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 2 months, 25 days ago

Watch a recording of the webinar 'Windows Phone 7.5 Background Workers' delivered by Silverlight MVP Gill Cleeren on February 28th, 2012. Slides and demos also available! Webinar summary: With the release of Windows Phone 7 Mango, a lot of extra features were added to the platform. One of the most anticipated ones is the possibility to create code that runs in the background. This way, applications can perform tasks such as polling a service, updating a live tile and much more. It's also possible to create audio agents that allow you to build media players that can play audio without the app on the foreground. In this webinar, we'll do a deep dive on all options we get to do background processing in WP7 Mango. read more...

add a comment |category: Windows Phone 7 |Views: 2

tags: Phone Windows another

Windows 8 and the future of XAML: Part 3: Using WinRT(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 3 months, 6 days ago

In the next part of SilverlightShow article series "Windows 8 and the future of XAML", Gill Cleeren starts writing code that makes use of WinRT components. After some “Hello Worlds”, he dives in more advanced concepts including Capabilities, the Share contract, working with the webcam and some more. read more...

add a comment |category: Windows 8 |Views: 18

tags: windows8 another

Working with Prism 4 Part 4: Region Navigation(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 3 months, 9 days ago

Find out how to leverage the navigation capabilities of Prism in a more loosely coupled and flexible way with the IRegionManager.RequestNavigate method, INavigationAware and IConfirmNavigationRequest interfaces. read more...

add a comment |category: Silverlight |Views: 5

tags: Silverlight another

Developing for a multitude of clients: Strategies for code reuse...(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 3 months, 17 days ago

In this article series, we're going to try and tackle a problem (or opportunity, depending on how you want to put it) a lot of business face today: customers expect to be able to use your applications on a multitude of devices, with different form factors, supporting different technologies. read more...

add a comment |category: Silverlight |Views: 9

tags: Silverlight another

Using the Live SDK in Windows 8 XAML/C# Metro Applications(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 3 months, 26 days ago

The Microsoft’s Live SDK (or commonly referred to as Live Connect), provides a set of controls and APIs that enables applications to integrate single sign-on (SSO) functionality using Windows Live ID. You can also use it to access data in SkyDrive, Hotmail, and Windows Live Messenger. The library supports multiple platforms, including Windows Phone 7 Mango and Windows 8 Metro Style applications using either C#, Visual Basic or JavaScript. In this article, we will build our first metro style application using the Live SDK and XAML/C#. read more...

add a comment |category: Windows 8 |Views: 29

tags: windows8 another

Working with Prism 4 Part 3: Composite Command and Pub/Sub Events(www.silverlightshow.net)

submitted by KMillerr(2072) 4 months, 1 day ago

In this article, you will see how to define multiple modules that can communicate with each other through a combination of CompositeCommands and Prism events. CompositeCommands let you have handlers registered or unregistered in a loosely coupled fashion, and allows you to have multiple handlers (child commands) that will be used by the CompositeCommand. Prism events are for situations that are not necessarily an action->reaction kind of set up where enablement and disablement is needed. You simply define the event type with its strongly typed payload and then subscribe or publish by obtaining the event reference through the EventAggregator. Both of these mechanisms give you a really powerful combination for having loosely coupled communications between composite parts of your application. read more...

1 comment |category: Silverlight |Views: 67

tags: Silverlight another