Windows App Developer Links - 2012-09-11

posted on 10 Sep 2012 | App Developer Links

Windows 8

  • Turn NumLock on Automatically upon Boot in Windows 8 (Michael Crump)

    • "I've ran into this issue on three separate machines where the NumLock key needs to be pressed to login to Windows 8 upon boot (assuming you have a number in your password). My BIOS setting is correct, but for some reason Windows 8 ignores it. The Solution..."

Windows 8 App Development

  • Remote machine debugging with Windows 8 (Simon Jackson)

    • "A nice feature we had in the Windows phone days was the ability to plug in your device and test your code running on it, if you had more than one device (about 7 in my case) then you just had to swap the device over and you were off again, however this did have some drawbacks... Now enter Win 8 and they have taken the debug options up a notch building on the remote debugging features of VS pro and above by allowing you to install a client on the target machine and push your apps to it and debug them, all without a single wire (unless you count the power cord). Even better is this facility is also available in the express editions..."
  • Windows 8 Games and Roaming Data (Chris Koenig)

    • "... For this article, we will be using a very basic WinRT game based on the popular game Bulls and Cows, often referred to as Mastermind, to illustrate how game data can be saved and shared using the different features of the Roaming Application Data Store in WinRT..."
  • Updating Windows 8 Tiles using C# (Christian Nagel)

    • "One of the great features of Windows 8 apps are tiles, the front facing information of apps. Windows 8 Apps can give live information to the user without the need to run the application. Tiles are not only icons, but can give actual information. A weather app shows the actual temperature, the news app gives highlights on news, the mail app the number of new emails since it was last opened - and all this can be done using pictures to give the app a more interesting look. This blog entry gives information on one way to update tiles automatically by offering a service with information for the tile..."
  • WinRT: Creating an Image Collage in C# (Sumit Maitra)

    • "In this post we create a picture collage in a Windows 8 application on the WinRT runtime. We will see how we can stitch together multiple images using the WritableBitmap class..."
  • Adventures in Windows 8: Solving activation errors (Laurent Bugnion)

    • "Sometimes when you work on a Windows 8 app, you will get a very annoying issue when starting the app. In that case, the app doesn't not even start past the Splash screen. Putting a breakpoint in App.xaml.cs doesn't help because the app doesn't even reach that point! So what exactly is happening? Well when a Windows 8 app starts, the system is performing a few check first. One of the checks, for instance, is to see if an app with the same package ID is already available..."
  • How to access a named control inside a XAML DataTemplate (using CSharp) (Jerry Nixon)

    • "In XAML, the ItemsControl, ListBox, ListView, FlipView, or GridView are the repeater controls. To define how each item is displayed in the UI, the developer defines a DataTemplate which he assigns to the ItemsControl's ItemTemplate property... How do you access controls inside a Template? ..."
  • Windows Azure Mobile Services Preview Walkthrough-Part 1: Windows 8 ToDo Demo Application (C#) (OakLeaf Systems)

    • "... This walkthrough, which is simpler than the Get Started with Data walkthrough, explains how to obtain a Windows Azure 90-day free trial, create a C#/XAML WASDB instance for a todo application, add a table to persist todo items, and generate and use a sample oakleaf-todo Windows 8 front-end application. During the preview period, you can publish up to six free Windows Mobile applications..."
  • Windows Azure Mobile Services Preview Walkthrough-Part 2: Authenticating Windows 8 App Users (C#) (OakLeaf Systems)

    • "... This walkthrough describes the process for completing task "Adding and authenticating the application's users": 1. Registering your Windows 8 app at the Live Connect Developer Center, 2. Restricting permissions to authenticated users, 3. Adding authentication code to the front-end application, 4. Authorizing users with scripts. The walkthrough is based on a combination of the Get started with authentication in Mobile Services and Authorize users with scripts tutorials..."
  • From the MVPs: Visual Studio 2012 meets PowerPoint (Devon Musgrave)

    • "David here. As the saying goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words," yet in software development we usually resort to text-based descriptions when defining features. The Visual Studio team has given us the ability to move from text-based to picture-based descriptions by leveraging one of the most common tools in the software development toolbox: Microsoft PowerPoint. In this post, I'm going to walk you through defining a feature using the new storyboarding features of Visual Studio 2012 and PowerPoint. By the end, you'll see how your analysts can define features by using tools they are familiar with and make them easily accessible to the developers by injecting them directly into Team Foundation Server..."
  • Windows 8 and HTML Part 10: Settings (Jeff Brand)

    • "Continuing with Part 10 of building WinRT applications with HTML and JavaScript. You can find earlier installments at their respective links... Our sample app, TweetScan, defaults to using #Windows8 as the default search term when you launch the application from the Start page. Part 8 showed how we could start with a new search term by integrating with the Search contract, but what about setting a new default search team from the Start page. Clearly, we need a way to specify settings for our application..."
  • Metro style app development for Windows RT PCs (Microsoft Download Center)

    • "This paper addresses various aspects of developing Metro style apps for Windows RT. The bulk of Metro style app development practices are the same for both Windows 8 and Windows RT, but in a few scenarios Windows RT and the hardware particular to these PCs may require special consideration. Scenarios covered by this documentation include general development practices for Metro style apps that run on Windows RT, remote debugging, installing the Windows App Certification Kit, installing app packages, and sensor API development..."

Tools, Services, Frameworks, & Libraries

  • Web Essentials 1.1 released (Mads Kristensen)

    • "I was debating whether to call this release version 1.1 or 2.0 because it contains quite a lot of new functionality. I've decided to stick with 1.1 since it also features a lot of fixes and tweaks to the current functionality. Download it at the VS Gallery. Now, let's take a tour of the new features..."
  • Win8nl utilities (Joost van Schaik)

    • "This is a provisional and partial port to WinRt of the #wp7nl Windows Phone utilities. It builds upon the following libraries: Rx for WinRt RC, MVVMLight by Laurent Bugnion, System.Windows.Interactivity, WinRtBehaviors. It consists of three projects: Win8nl, Win8nl.Externals, Win8nl.Utilities..."
  • Modern UI Icons (Austin Andrews)

    • "Handcrafted pixel perfect icons tailored for the Modern UI style. Each and every icon is carefully crafted in Expression Design with vector in mind. Now hosted on GitHub finding new icons and tracking your requests is easier than ever... What's Included: 753 Handcrafted Icons, .design Source for Expression Design, 48x48 App Bar Icons for Windows Phone, XAML vectors..."