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My Wish List for Windows “Blue”
17 May 13 05:48 PM | pavely | with no comments

Many rumors are flying around at this time about the upcoming release of Windows 8.1 (code named “Blue”, which represents a wave of product updates, including Windows Phone and others). I thought I‘d state my hopes for this release, not just in terms of user features, but also from a developer’s perspective. As a developer, I spend most of my time on my trusty laptop, not some tablet based device. Naturally, the desktop world is my friend. The Windows 8 Start screen is close to perfect for tablet...

תגים:MFC, COM, C++, .NET, C#, DEV, Win32, XAML, DirectX, Media Foundation, Windows 8, Windows Runtime, C++/CX, Windows Phone 8

XAML as DSL
05 May 13 04:14 PM | pavely | 2 comment(s)

About 3 years ago, when .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 were just released, I’ve blogged (part 1, part 2) about the changes that took XAML from its WPF inception to the System.Xaml namespace and System.Xaml.Dll assembly, to be available more generally, not just for WPF. I’ve shown that XAML is just a declarative way of creating objects, setting their properties – sometimes in interesting ways. I did promise at the end of that second post that I’d show how to use attached properties, but never did have...

תגים:.NET, C#, PARSING, DEV, XAML, WPF, .NET 4.5

Windows Phone 8 Dev Camp
22 April 13 03:13 PM | pavely | with no comments

A few hours ago, Ariel Ben Horesh and myself presented two sessions for Windows Phone 8 development at Microsoft offices in Ra’anana (Israel). Thank you all for attending! It was fun – it was the second time I presented with someone else (Ariel) at the same time… we had no time to rehearse, but it was great! The code we showed can be found on github at https://github.com/arielbh/RightMyGuide . The slides links are below. Enjoy! BTW, the IMDB service I created to run on Azure will not be up forever...

תגים:.NET, C#, DEV, XAML, C# 5.0, Visual Studio 2012, Windows Phone 8

Task and TaskCompletionSource
12 April 13 10:38 AM | pavely | 1 comment(s)

The Task and Task<T> classes have been around since in .NET 4, and are fairly well known. In .NET 4, the typical usage of a Task is to run some code on a separate thread (by default using the thread pool), as a better alternative to the raw thread pool. Task has a multitude of constructors, but all of them expect a delegate that is the code to be run when the task is executed. Task provides methods such as Wait , so that code can continue when a Task finishes, and powerful continuation model...

תגים:.NET, C#, DEV, C# 5.0, Windows Phone 8

Webcasts on Windows Phone 8 development
27 March 13 09:51 AM | pavely | with no comments

Recently, I’ve done two sessions on Windows Phone 8 development, that are available on YouTube . If you’re new to Windows Phone, these sessions may help you to get started. The session are in English and are comprised mostly of coding examples. A third session is planned to happen about 2 weeks from now. First session: Second session: Enjoy!

תגים:video, .NET, C#, DEV, XAML, Windows Phone, Windows Phone 8

Windows Phone Tip: Beware of PhoneApplicationService.State
18 March 13 05:58 AM | pavely | with no comments

A Windows Phone 8 app may be in one of several states: In the running state, it’s the foreground app and the user is working with the app. So far good. If the user taps the Start hardware button, he’s taken to the Home screen (naturally), and our app becomes dormant. In this state, all its memory is intact, but all threads are suspended so that app cannot consume any CPU time. Entering this state causes the PhoneApplicationService.Deactivated event to be fired. The app should save its state because...

תגים:.NET, C#, DEV, Windows Phone, Windows Phone 8

XAML Tip: Graphics with ItemsControl
23 February 13 12:04 AM | pavely | with no comments

Sometimes in a WPF or Windows Store or Windows Phone application we need to draw some things based on some collection of data items. Suppose we have the following simple data item: class CarData { public double Distance { get; set; } public string Image { get; set; } } Suppose we have a collection of CarData objects, and the requirement was to show a set of images along a line with a particular distance, like in the following screenshot: The distance from the left is determined by the Distance property...

תגים:.NET, Visual Studio, C#, Silverlight, DEV, XAML, WPF, Windows Phone, Windows 8, Windows Runtime, Windows Phone 8

C# Extension Methods and Fluent Interfaces
07 February 13 03:42 AM | pavely | 1 comment(s)

The idea of fluent interfaces is not new, and has many forms. The basic idea is to use a single statement to encompass a series of operations that are natural, or at least simple, to use. There are very few fluent interfaces in .NET – the most well known, which has some fluent interface semantics, is the System.Text.StringBuilder class. Here’s a simple example: public static string BuildInfo(Process process) { return new StringBuilder( "Process " ) .AppendLine(process.ProcessName) .Append...

תגים:.NET, C#, C# 3.0, DEV, C# 4.0, Fun, C# 5.0

Windows Runtime with C++/C#: Anatomy of a WinRT Class
30 December 12 09:47 AM | pavely | with no comments

The Windows Runtime (WinRT) is based on COM (I referred to it in the past as a “better COM”), which means every method and property must be part of an interface. Also, COM does not support static members (only instance members) and does not easily support parameterized constructors. Inheritance is again an issue in classic COM – the closest thing is COM aggregation, and that’s not really inheritance in the usual sense of the word. Using C++/CX or a .NET language allows creating WinRT types that support...

תגים:COM, C#, DEV, Windows 8, Windows Runtime, Visual Studio 2012, C++/CX

Windows Phone 8: Integrating with the Wallet
08 November 12 11:18 AM | pavely | with no comments

Earlier this week, Microsoft held the Discovery event in Tel Aviv, Israel, with a distinguished guest, Steve Ballmer. In the event, Microsoft has officially launched Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 (and XBOX 360 and Kinect…) in Israel. During the presentations, a wallet application on Windows Phone was shown, which was developed by us, CodeValue (and specifically by me ). This article and this one describe something about the app (in Hebrew). Here are some screenshots (some text is in Hebrew): In this...

תגים:C#, DEV, C# 5.0, .NET 4.5, Windows Phone 8

Windows 8 Store Apps: Class Library vs. Windows Runtime Component
30 October 12 03:14 PM | pavely | 1 comment(s)

When working with Windows 8 Store apps in C# (or VB, but I’ll stick with C#), there are several ways of creating reusable (or at least seemingly reusable) class libraries for Windows 8 Store projects. In this post, I’ll take a to look at the options, contrasting their features and usefulness. Looking at the new project dialog in Visual Studio 2012, under the Windows Store node (under Visual C# ), we can see the following: There is a third option, the traditional Class Library project located under...

תגים:C++, .NET, C#, DEV, Windows 8, .NET 4.5, Windows Runtime

Windows Phone: Playing Sound Effects
03 September 12 01:25 PM | pavely | with no comments

I wanted to create a simple timer application for Windows Phone . The timer would count backwards from a user configured value and when it reached zero, it would play some sound effect to indicate expiration. Sounds simple enough… This is how the application looks like: The problem turned out to be playing that sound effect. I had a WAV file I wanted to play. Silverlight has a MediaElement object that is capable of playing video and/or audio, so it seemed to be a good candidate for the job. MediaElement...

תגים:.NET, XNA, C#, Silverlight, DEV, Fun, Games, Audio, Windows Phone

Windows 8 & Phone 8 UG August Meeting
29 August 12 11:22 PM | pavely | with no comments

Last evening we had a User Group meeting in Microsoft Offices in Ra’anana, with a lot of activity and fun. Thank you all for participating! In the first part, we discussed the Windows 8 Store from various angles, end user and developer. In the second part, we discussed Windows Phone 7.x and the upcoming 8, along with other sporadic topics - C++, WinRT, DirectX, COM, XNA, XAML… it was fun! And don’t forget the giveaways! Just as a gentle reminder, out next meeting is on September 13th , where we’ll...

תגים:COM, C++, .NET, XNA, C#, CLR, DEV, XAML, Native Development, DirectX, C# 5.0, Windows Phone, Windows 8, C++11, Windows Phone User Group, Windows Devices User Group, Windows Runtime, C++/CX

Console Calculator with Roslyn (Part 2)
08 August 12 02:39 PM | pavely | with no comments

In the first part we created a simple enough calculator, but it lacked two features I wanted to have: 1. work with degrees or radians in trigonometric functions. 2. allow simple variables to be used without first declaring them. Let’s see how we can implement these features, starting with the first. Trigonometric functions work in radians, which is sometimes inconvenient.What we need is a way to change the parameter to the trigonometric functions by multiplying it by PI/180 if degrees was requested...

תגים:.NET, C#, PARSING, DEV, Fun, Roslyn, Visual Studio 2012

Console Calculator with Roslyn (Part 1)
06 August 12 11:49 AM | pavely | 1 comment(s)

A while back I create a Console Calculator project (on CodePlex ) that used manual expression parsing to “understand” a mathematical expression and resolve it. As parsing was involved, this wasn’t a trivial undertaking. What about implementing something similar with Roslyn? Roslyn is Microsoft’s “Compiler as a Service” initiative, now in its second CTP. It provides a powerful framework for examining and manipulating code (among other services). Roslyn can be installed on VS 2010 SP1 or VS 2012 RC...

תגים:.NET, C#, PARSING, DEV, Console, Roslyn, Visual Studio 2012