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? XamlUIPresenter The documentation explains … Continue reading →
DirectX11.1 introduced a bunch of built in effects into Direct2D that span the following categories In my previous posts I showed how you could use SharpDx to call and render some of these effects inside your XAML Managed Metro apps. … Continue reading →
In the categories 'Win8; Xaml'
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I’ve seen a couple of interesting comps of metro apps that have a ribbon, they actually look decent especially if your building a business productivity app. I wanted to prototype a metro app with a ribbon to see what it … Continue reading →
Recently, I had the opportunity to talk to Robert Green about the HTML authoring features you can find in Blend. You can view the recording of this Visual Studio Toolbox episode below (or download a high-quality MP4):
During this talk, I demo’ed how a lot of the features we added can be used end-to-end to create a working (…and good looking!) HTML-flavored Metro style app.
Some of the big Blend features I covered include:
Working with the Styles pane, CSS Properties panel, and the Applied Rules list
Adding a ListView control and associating it with some data
Defining an item template and modifying how it looks
Specifying a binding
Laying out content with the Grid element
Creating a CSS3 transition
Using interactive mode to style the checked state of my ListView
Showing how to use the Platform panel to design for devices
Designing for devices by using media queries and listening to JavaScript events
I hope to provide more screencasts in the future that target specific features in Blend, so if you have any requests for topics you would like to see shown, please feel free to post in the comments below.
Cheers,
Kirupa
We’ve been seeing a sharp increase in the number of people interested in getting started with jQuery lately in our training and consulting business which is exciting since it’s such a great framework to use for client-side coding. If you’ve been fighting with cross-browser issues and want to make client-side development fun again then jQuery is a great way to go in my opinion.
One of the challenges with learning any new framework is knowing where to find documentation and good sources of examples. Although I normally rely on the standard documentation on the http://www.jQuery.com site, there are several other sources out there that can be helpful. Some of the sources are a bit dated, but they still provide a good way to find out more about core functionality. Here’s a quick list of the sites and extensions I’m aware of. If you know of others please let me know by adding a comment and I’ll update the list.
api.jquery.com
http://api.jquery.com
This is the main documentation site available for jQuery. It’s a great place to find details, but you’ll have to know where to look which can be frustrating sometimes for new developers.
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First Floor Software is proud to announce the immediate availability of the first public preview of XAML Spy. XAML Spy is a visual runtime inspector for Silverlight, Windows Phone and WinRT XAML applications. The product is build on Silverlight Spy technology and includes a great number of new features and improvements.
Learn more at xamlspy.com
In Christian’s post Visual Authoring for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview he mentions that one of the changes to Blend is the introduction of an architecture that isolates the designer into its own process. In fact, this new architecture is used in both Blend and the XAML designer in Visual Studio. In this post, I’ll give a little more detail into what this means to you as a Metro style app author.
Stay on your side!
This new architecture isolates the runtime components from the products’ infrastructure and user interface into two processes. The runtime components, which may also include user code, as well as most of the Blend user interface for XAML projects, such as the Properties panel, are hosted in the designer process (XDesProc.exe) while the project system and the code/XAML editors live in the host process (blend.exe for Blend and devenv.exe for Visual Studio).
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The HTTP protocol supports data compression of network traffic via the Content-Encoding header. Compressing network traffic is beneficial because it reduces the amount of data that needs to be transmitted over the network - and sending fewer bytes obviously takes less time! The tradeoff is that it takes a bit of extra work to decompress the data, but because the bottleneck is nearly always network, HTTP compression should be a win pretty much every time. And when you're dealing with comparatively slow, unreliable networks like the ones used by cell phones, the advantages of compression are even more significant.
Aside: Because most networks are lossy and transfer data in packets, sending just one fewer byte can be meaningful if it reduces the number of packets.
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As the use of Ajax continues to grow in popularity it's worth taking the time to think through how Ajax calls are structured and used in an application especially if re-use and maintenance are important. If you analyze a lot of the Ajax code out there you'll likely find that calls to the server are scattered throughout scripts and pages. For example, if an Ajax call is made to get a list of jobs, a call is made directly in the script that needs the data. If another page/script needs the same type of data another Ajax call is made. This results in code duplication and complicates maintenance since Ajax calls aren't consolidated.
While there's certainly nothing wrong with this approach (it gets the job done after all), you can get better re-use out of your Ajax calls by consolidating them into JavaScript objects. In this post I'll talk about how Ajax calls can be consolidated using JavaScript patterns and describe the benefits this approach provides.
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Today is an important day for me. A couple of days ago, my colleague Charlotte and me released a new Windows Phone 7 app: 2Day. Because we put a lot of energy in the design and the realization of this app, I wanted to showcase it in a post
2Day is a todo-list app we have been working on for several months. It can be summarized the following way:
fast & fluid: 2Day is fast to run & fast to use because of many tricks (you can add a task right from your home screen)
connected: 2Day supports both ToodleDo and Exchange synchronization + SkyDrive as an online backup storage
engaged: we listen feedback very carefully and users can reach us by mail, Twitter or UserVoice
2Day is available in English, Italian, Spanish, German and French !
click for full-resolution image
I will without any doubt write some articles about the technical story behind 2Day. They are many interesting things I would like to share with you.
Please, if you appreciate my blog and think that 2Day is cool spread the word
For more information:
2Day is a todo-list app we have been working on for several months. It can be summarized the following way:
