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Windows 8 Live Tiles – take 2

Quite some time ago I blogged about Live Tiles & Toast Notifications Windows 8 feature. About a week ago I was delivering Windows 8 training and as a part of this course was delivering a sessions about Live Tiles and Windows 8 PLM (PLM = Process Lifetime Management, session which discusses when Windows 8 runs apps and some point about Windows 8 background tasks). The PLM session mentions, that Windows 8 apps are permitted to run background tasks, but they will be executed approximately once in...

What’s New in Windows Phone 8 (8 out of 8)–Wallet

Windows Phone 8 adds new interesting feature – the Wallet – which helps users to manage their virtual cards (membership, credit, debit), coupons and use them for in-app and real-world transactions. The documentation states, that Wallet helps users to: Collect coupons, credit cards, memberships, loyalty cards, and more in one place. Manage the payment instruments that they use in the app and music store. Link items in the Wallet to apps on their phone. Make contactless transactions, using Near-Field...

What’s New in Windows Phone 8 (7 out of 8)–In-App-Purchases

This post talks about new monetization feature in Windows Phone 8 – In-App-Purchases (IAP). According to multiple industry sources ( link1 , link2 , link3 ) IAP can actually make more money that free/ad-supported application. Let’s see how to add this feature to application. In this post I will show how to build simplest “virtual” shop app. All IAP functionality process allocated in Windows.ApplicationModel.Store namespace. First let’s understand the terminology associated with IAP process. Product...

What’s New in Windows Phone 8 (6 out of 8)–Location services and maps

Windows Phone 8 brings long awaited updates to location services and brand new map control (with associated services) which is based on Nokia maps. Location services So what’s new in location services. First of all – the new WinRT API which is shared with Windows 8. To use location services application must declare the following capability in application manifest: < Capability Name ="ID_CAP_LOCATION" /> The “main” class – Geolocator – belongs to Windows.Devices.Geolocation namespace...

What’s New in Windows Phone 8 (5 out of 8)–Quick tip: creating hybrid applications

One important feature in Windows Phone 8 is ability to develop high performance applications using Direct3D graphics and C++. While this feature clearly targets game developers, many applications could also gain performance combining native code with C++ components. Moreover, even when developing XAML/C# applications, it is possible to fully leverage modern GPU in Windows Phone 8 device by mixing XAML flexibility with Direct3D graphics. Note : Pure native development using Direct3D are not covered...

What’s New in Windows Phone 8 (4 out of 8)–Protocol handler and file extensions

This post is dedicated to new extensibility feature – ability to associate file extension and protocol type to automatically launch your app when another app launches a specific file type or URI. When launched, a deep link URI is used to send the file (a reference to the file) or URI to application. You can also use the association launching API to launch another app in the same way. File type association is useful when your app need automatically launch on invoking specific file type from email...

What’s New in Windows Phone 8 (3 out of 8)–Voice Recognition

This post dedicated to additional interesting feature in Windows Phone 8 – voice recognition and speech synthesizing. Speech synthesizing Let’s start from speech synthesizing. The functionality localized in Windows.Phone.Speech.Synthesis namespace. Using classes in this namespace you can create text-to-speech (TTS) scenarios in your application. The functionality enables read some document identified by URI, string of text with SSML markup or plain text. My sample focuses on plain text scenario....

What’s New in Windows Phone 8 (2 out of 8)–Lock Screen

In previous post I described how to enrich user experience by customizing application tiles. In this post I will show how to enable your application to present some information on phone’s lock screen. In Windows Phone 8 applications could provide 3 pieces of info on lock screen: application’s icon, count and text. On screenshot below my sample application provides icon, count and some text: If application selected by user, the lock screen could show app icon defined in app manifest, count and text...

What’s New in Windows Phone 8 (1 out of 8)–Tiles

One of the most noticeable feature of Windows Phone 8 is change of main screen with 3 different tile types: Each tile could be one out from 3 types available sizes – small, normal and wide. Also, each type could be form 3 different types – Iconic, Flip and Cycle. All 3 sizes and all 3 types are available for 3rd party developers. Let’s see how to use this interesting feature in the application. So what are the sizes? The sizes are: Small Medium Wide What about 3 types? The types are: Flip – this...

Windows Phone 8 SDK available

Just announced at BUILD keynotes – Windows Phone 8 SDK available now! It includes Visual Studio Express 2012 edition for Windows Phone (which also works as add-on for paid versions of Visual Studio 2012), new Hyper-V based Windows Phone emulator and Expression Blend. It could be downloaded from the following location: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=261873   Stay tuned for more exciting news to come, Alex

Working with NFC–Take 2

Some time ago (I’ve blogged about working with proximity devices – NFC – in Windows 8 Consumer preview: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/alex_golesh/archive/2012/02/29/windows-8-consumer-preview-and-visual-studio-11-beta-working-with-proximity-device-part-2-11.aspx ). Then I’ve talked about a simple way performing NFC communication – using pub/sub communication pattern which is good for exchanging simple messages using PublishMessage and PublishBinaryMessage functions on ProximityDevice class....

I’m Microsoft MVP for another year!

About 10 minutes ago, I received an email presenting me with the Microsoft MVP Award in Silverlight! I am very honored to receive an MVP Award for the fourth time in row and I will continue contributing to the online and offline developer community worldwide. This is a great opportunity and place to thank quite a few people who helped me to win this Award again: My wife and daughter for having so much patience and providing the best support I could only dream about! My current and past managers ...

Windows 8 Release Preview

Windows 8 Release Preview (RP) was published and can be downloaded by anyone who want to try this great preview of upcoming OS! More info about it here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/release-preview Download the version to try from here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/download For those, who want to grab ISO images links could be found at the following location: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso (this link also provides the product key to use)   Developers...

Book review: Microsoft Silverlight 5 and Windows Azure Enterprise Integration

As promised here , here is overview of the book I just finished to read. First of all – my congratulations to author of the book, David Burela, as the book written very clear and describes both, basics and advanced concepts, I very practical and professional way. From other hand, author made this book also enjoyable! Now about the book itself. It has 12 chapter which overview whole spectrum of possibilities of how to integrate Windows Azure and Silverlight application. It starts from traditional...

Books, books, books

Seems like today is “books” day. Working really hard for last few months, I completely forgot to blog about the book which I took part in! Announcing: Real World .NET, C#, and Silverlight: Indispensible Experiences from 15 MVPs Few months ago, 15 MVPs from around the globe joined together to write an ultimate resource book for discovering and understanding the C#, .NET 4 Framework and Windows Phone 7.5. Today the book is published, and available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Real-World-NET...
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