The art of simplicity

Interested in building cross-platform mobile apps using Visual Studio? Microsoft made this easy thanks to the Multi-Device Hybrid Apps Visual Studio extension . This extension allows you to combine Visual Studio and Apache Cordova to easily build hybrid apps that run on iOS, Android, Windows, and Windows Phone using a single project based on HTML and JavaScript. The extension is available for download here . Remark: Be aware that the extension will download and install some additional dependencies, including Joyent Node.js Git CLI Google Chrome Apache Ant Oracle Java JDK 7 Android SDK SQLLite for Windows Runtime Apple iTunes More information can be found at http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/explore/cordova-vs.aspx .

Some months ago, I did an attempt to integrate SQLite in a cross platform Android, iOS and Windows Phone PhoneGap application. It was a painful experience to say the least. We encountered a lot of isssues and in the end it was way to slow. Not a good first experience with using a SQL store on a mobile device… So it makes me really happy to see that Microsoft Open Technologies published an open source WebSQL plugin for Apache Cordova and PhoneGap. This plugin allows developers to integrate a persistent SQL-based local storage solution in their Cordova apps using the exact same JavaScript code across Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Windows Store. Under the hood, the plugin is using WebSQL on iOS and Android, and the open source SQLite library on Windows devices. SQLite happens to be easily usable across Windows devices using the SQLitePCL portable Class Library published recently. The plugin can be found on the Apache Cordova plugins registry More information and the officia...

Good news! Microsoft has finally ported Unity DI Container to Windows Phone 8. The Unity NuGet package now contains a version for: The full .NET framework. The NetCore version (for Windows Store apps). The WP8 version.

HttpClient is a part of .NET Framework 4.5 and Windows Store apps that provides developers an extremely easy way to connect with services across the internet including REST-based services. But if you wanted to use the same library in Windows Phone 8 or a portable library you were out of luck. Last month Microsoft changed this by releasing a Beta of the portable version of HttpClient . This release of HttpClient adds support for the following platforms: .NET framework 4.0 Windows Phone 7.5 and higher Portable class libraries What do I need? In order to use this release of HttpClient you need to ensure that you have two things. Visual Studio 2010 (for .NET 4.0 Windows Phone 7.1) or Visual Studio 2012 (required for .NET 4.5, Windows Store and Windows Phone 8). The NuGet package manager version 2.1 or higher. To use the HttpClient package, right click on your solution, go to the Manage Nuget Packages dialog, search for Id Microsoft.Net.Http, and make sur...

Last week the Windows Phone team hosted the Windows Phone 8 Jump Start training, a fast-paced and demo-packed learning ‘experience’ tailored to show developers how to build responsive, appealing, and effective applications quickly. All 20 modules are now available online for your on-demand viewing, (or download) on Channel 9. Mod 01a: Introducing Windows Phone 8 Development Part 1 Mod 01b: Introducing Windows Phone 8 Development Part 2 Mod 02: Designing Windows Phone 8 Apps Mod 03: Building Windows Phone 8 Apps Mod 04: Files and Storage on Windows Phone 8 Mod 05: Windows Phone 8 Application Lifecycle Mod 06: Background Agents Mod 07: Tiles and Lock Screen Notifications Mod 08: Push Notifications Mod 09: Using Phone Resources in Windows Phone 8 Mod 10: App to App Communication in Windows Phone 8 Mod 11: Network Communication in Windows Phone 8 Mod 12: Proximity Sensors and Bluetooth in Windows Phone 8 Mod 13: Speech Input in Wind...

Project Liike is an effort by the Microsoft patterns & practices team  to produce guidance that helps organizations build mobile web experiences based off of existing web applications. There are countless devices available today and all indications suggest this number is only going to grow, without convergence. The factors to help choose between native apps and web apps are fairly well-known. Those who choose the web face numerous decisions and challenges based on their requirements. This project aims to help. The team is building a sample application, called Mileage Stats Mobile. It will be released as open source along with all of its unit tests. This reference application, began with the source from a previous effort Project Silk . Project Silk was about building cross-browser web applications with a focus on client-side interactivity. However, it was optimized for desktop browser. Project Silk's reference application was simply called Mileage Stats. Project Liike is a...

    “Adobe® Shadow is a new inspection and preview tool that allows front-end web developers and designers to work faster and more efficiently by streamlining the preview process, making it easier to customize websites for mobile devices.”   Features Synchronized Browsing and Refreshing (Device Pairing) — Wirelessly pair multiple iOS and Android devices to your computer . With Shadow, you browse in Chrome, and all connected devices will stay in sync. Remote inspect your code — Remote inspection and debugging capabilities. Target a device for remote inspection and using familiar development tools, make changes to your HTML, CSS and JavaScript and see your device update instantly. Localhost URL support — Shadow now works correctly with URLs containing localhost, and 127.0.0.1. On Mac OS X, it also works with machine.local. Adobe Edge integration — If you are using Adobe Edge, the Preview in Browser command now works with Shadow. You ...

Jeff Blankenburg released, with the help of a lot of other authors, the 31 Days of Mango e-book format for Kindle . If you would like to read all of these articles on-the-go, while supporting the developers that wrote them, they are now available for in the Nook and Kindle stores! Of course, if you are short of money, you can still read the online version …

Last week the Windows Phone team announced the beta release of Mango . It contains a long list of exciting new features but one that I was especially interested in are the OData improvements. As we use OData for our TFS Monitor application , I’m happy to see how much easier my life will become. Kind of sad that I have to wait until the fall before I can add this functionality to my application Oh, before I forget, here is the list with the upcoming OData improvements: OData Client Library for Windows Phone Is Included in the Windows Phone SDK In this release, the OData client library for Windows Phone is included in the Windows Phone Developer SDK. It no longer requires a separate download. Add Service Reference Integration You can now generate the client data classes used to access an OData service simply by using the Add Service Reference tool in Visual Studio. For more information, see How to: Consume an OData Service for Windows Phone . Support for LINQ...

If you didn’t know it yet, I’ve build my own WP7 application . As I’m using oData in the backend, Fiddler is an invaluable tool that helps me debugging all the web traffic. However there is one problem, Fiddler doesn’t seem to work with the Windows Phone 7 emulator. I solved the problem by executing following steps mentioned on Eric Laws blog : Start Fiddler. Click Tools > Fiddler Options. Open the Connections tab and tick the Allow remote computers to connect box Click OK to close the Fiddler Options dialog. In the QuickExec box under the session list, type prefs set fiddler.network.proxy.registrationhostname HostName where HostName is the name of your desktop computer. Close and restart Fiddler. Start (or restart) the Windows Phone 7 Emulator. Open Internet Explorer on the Emulator. Observe, your traffic shows in Fiddler.

Last week Microsoft announced the release of the Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS. This toolkit contains resources and services designed to make it easier for iOS developers to use Windows Azure. This iOS toolkit includes the following pieces: A compiled Objective-C library for working with services running in Windows Azure (e.g. push notification, authN/authZ, and storage) Full source code for the objective-C library (along with Xcode project file) Sample iOS application that demonstrates how to use Windows Azure Storage with full source code Documentation The Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS—along with all the source code—has been released to github: https://github.com/microsoft-dpe/watoolkitios-lib https://github.com/microsoft-dpe/watoolkitios-samples https://github.com/microsoft-dpe/watoolkitios-doc Some screen casts to get started: Getting Started with the iOS Toolkit Deploying the Cloud Ready Package for Devices During this announcement, they also ...

On May 26th, Ordina Belgium(the company I work for) is organizing a free technology event. Ordina’s technology specialists will give 21 30 minutes sessions , spread over 5 tracks. The event is free for everyone to join, registration is required. You can register here: www.ordina.be/differentiate . We will have the following sessions for you to attend: Agenda: Stand out from the crowd with Microsoft technology on May 26, 6 pm 30-minute sessions – the choice is yours .Net Visual Studio LightSwitch Building a Windows Phone 7 application: lessons learned C#5 Async SharePoint Automated scripted deployment of SharePoint SharePoint 2010: architectural overview Developing against SharePoint 2010 lists SQL Where .Net meets SQL Server: SQL CLR Extending to multilingual reporting Using geo data within Report Builder 3.0 Application Lifecycle Management Automate your deployment cycle with TFS Build 2010 and Workflow...

In the current version of the Windows Phone only one application a time is allowed to run inside the sandbox. While some applications have the ability to run in the background, they are specialized applications that do not run in 'the sandbox'. Our own applications have to live without background processing.  So how do you know if your application is running or not? The answer is simple. For your application to be running, it has to be focused to the screen. In other words, if you can't see your application, it isn't running. Switching away from your application can happen on a number of different cases including: User Presses Back from the first page of your application. User Presses the Home or Search button. User responds to a 'toast' notification. Interruption activity occurs (e.g. Phone call). The fact that your application stops running is called 'tombstoning'. When your application is going to be tombstoned it enters a paused state where your ...

During the Easter holidays I’m trying to catch up with all the great content that was announced at MIX 11. Two very interesting improvements that Windows Phone users and developers can expect with the new Marketplace and App Hub in the Mango timeframe is focused on enterprise development. The first one is the Beta Distribution Service. This allows developers to distribute pre-certified apps to an access-controlled set of beta users. How does it work? The developer selects a list of up to 100 testers.( This number will probably change). Developer sends an email to the designated testers that includes a private deeplink that points to the app in the Marketplace. This allows only the testers to access and download the content since the app is not discoverable in the Marketplace via Search. Only testers selected in the App Hub based on their Windows Live ID can test the app and provide feedback for 90 days. The beta cannot be updated. If you have multiple updates based...

Today I’m giving a session at TechDays Belgium , were I have the pleasure to announce the first release(actually 1.1) of the Ordina TFS Monitor tool.  TFS Monitor is a free Windows Phone 7 application that I have developed together with the Ordina ALM team. With TFS Monitor all the data available inside your Team Foundation Server environment becomes available anywhere you are. Use your Windows Phone 7 device to connect to the Ordina TFS server and get always the most up to date information. Thanks to the support of push notifications, you even get notified when important events happen inside the TFS environment. Features The current version of the TFS Monitor app offers the following features: Real time push notifications of TFS build, checkin and workitem events Overview of your projects List of work items Work item Details List of builds Build Details Events overview Screenshots Download TFS Monitor for free here or use the Windows Phone marketplace. More in...

At the MIX 2011 a lot of announcements were made. So it’s my duty to highlight some of the stuff that is coming to us in the near future. No long explanation, just everything you need to know about ‘Mango’: General update is schedule for the fall all existing phones and new phones will get the update 16 additional languages will be supported more countries where we can create apps (from 30 to 38) more countries where we can buy apps (from 16 to 35) Marketplace / Search better apps list: filter by letters (like with the contacts) new search button to search for a particular app better marketplace more information with less confusion (music and apps are no longer mixed) search for podcasts new “related” pivot item when seeing an app for related app we can integrate an app with the search feature of the phone Web Experience the update include IE9 the core engine is the same code base that the on...

Interested in developing for the Windows Phone but you don’t know where to start? I found this material , created by Rob Miles, it’s an introduction to Windows Phone development for anyone learning to program. It contains 8 sections with labs, PowerPoint presentations, demos and detailed notes. So if you really want to start from scratch, a must read!

In a WP7 application we are building we have a databound pivot control: <controls:Pivot x:Name="Pivoter" Title="{Binding Title}" TitleTemplate="{StaticResource PivotTitleTemplate}" HeaderTemplate="{StaticResource PivotHeaderTemplate}" ItemsSource="{Binding Items}" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource DisplayItemDataTemplate}"> </controls:Pivot > The Items property we are binding to is an observablecollection . When the page is displayed it creates all of the pivot items but the first item does not get created unless I scroll forward and back to it. It has an entry in the scroll list but no PivotItem control. I couldn’t find a good reason what causes this, but I have a workaround. By setting the pivot-controls SelectedIndex to 1 in the page-loaded-event, it magically started working. Its not an ideal solution, but it works.

One of the criteria to publish your application to the MarketPlace is that you include a screenshot in PNG format with dimensions 480x800 pixels. And yes, it must be exactly this size. So I used the free snipping tool inside Windows 7 to take a “Window snip” from inside the emulator. Unfortunately this snip wasn’t the correct size. Don’t open Photoshop or Paint.NET and start resizing your image. Instead hover over the emulator and click the zoom icon that appears on the right. Change the zoom level to 100%  and capture the image again. This gives you a pixel-perfect image to upload to MarketPlace. Note: An even simpler solution is downloading the WP7 screenshot tool .

When trying to deploy a WP7 app  inside Visual Studio to the device, it suddenly started to fail with the following error: “Error - This operation returned because the timeout period expired.” Same problem when using the deployment tool. Restarting my phone, restarting my pc,… nothing worked. So I started to think what was different then before. I realized that my Wi-Fi connection was enabled on the Phone. Could that be the problem? So I disabled Wi-Fi again, tried to deploy and indeed this time it worked!