Windows App Developer Links - 2012-04-30

posted on 29 Apr 2012 | App Developer Links

Visual Studio 11

  • Visual Studio 11 Beta: Test Controller Goes 64 Bit!! (Rubel's Blog)

    • "Visual Studio 2010 supported 64 bit Test Agent which used to allow us to do 64bit test runs as explained here. But Test Controller was capable of running in 32 bit mode only. As a 32 bit process, it was limited to 2GB of memory. This causes scale issues sometimes as QTController process starts throwing "Out of Memory" exceptions as it approaches 2GB limit. This eventually causes abort of Load Test run. Good news is that Visual Studio 11 Beta supports 64 bit Test Controller."

Metro App Development

  • ‘XamlUIPresenter' , what are you ? :) (Jose Fajardo)

    • "There is an interesting API in the WinRT XAML namespace that sounds damn interesting BUT no public examples of how to use it. Even the MS folks are quiet about it ... What does "XamlUIPresenter" do?"

  • Creating a DirectX XAML control using C++/CX (Morten Nielsen)

    • "With Windows 8 Metro style apps, you can now also build XAML controls not only with C# and VB.NET but also with C++. If you are a .NET developer you will probably wonder why you would do that - and granted there might be several reasons you wouldn't. However there is a few nice things about C++ that .NET libraries doesn't give you: 1. You can use existing C++ libraries and link them directly in. This will allow you to re-use an enormous amount of code already out there. 2. DirectX is a first-class citizen in C++ 11, and officially the only way to use DirectX in XAML (although there are ways to access this from C#)."

  • Windows 8 development Links (Martin Beeby)

    • "I am just on my way home from a great Windows 8 event in Manchester. We had a full house (sorry that the room was a little packed) and loads of talks. During my two presentations I promised to share some links and example code that I showed during the talk... So here they are..."

Apps & Code to Look At

  • WinRT XAML Toolkit (xyzzer)

    • "Project Description: A set of controls, extensions and helper classes for Windows Runtime XAML applications"

  • Callisto (Tim Heuer)

    • "Callisto is a library for use in Windows 8 XAML applications (aka Metro style apps). The XAML framework in Windows.UI.Xaml is great, but has some functionality that isn't provided in-the-box in a few controls and APIs. Callisto serves to provided added functionality on top of the XAML UI framework for Windows."