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All posts tagged "silverlight"


Thursday, March 3, 2011

Developers: Planning a Cross-Platform Solution

Posted by Danny Simmons in "Windows Phone Developer" @ 05:30 PM

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_...m-solution.aspx

"I recently blogged about Flashcards.Show Version 2 for WPF, Silverlight, and Windows Phone, which features the Flashcards.Show application. I'm not going to (again) review the app, but I do want to talk about how we developed the application and the design the code base to support multiple clients.

The first version of Flashcards.Show was a Windows (WPF) application. This app was originally designed by IdentityMine, and used a few Windows 7 features such as multi-touch and taskbar integration. While the first version was great, we wanted to increase its value by enabling users to share the decks that they are creating. Therefore, when we set to work on version 2, we sought both functional and technological solutions to enable ease of use for the deck-sharing scenarios, as well as ease of development and maintenance of the code."

Yochay Kiriaty gives a good tutorial on some of the things to plan for if you are looking to bring your application to many different platforms, such as Windows Phone, Silverlight, and Windows Applications. This is the vision that Microsoft has been touting for a few years now (3 screens and the cloud). Development tools are getting better and better at providing this functionality, but it still takes some planning up front to ensure the code that will be portable and compatible accross the different platforms.


Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Petzold on Sound Recording

Posted by Adan Galvan in "Windows Phone News" @ 07:00 AM

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/mag...e/gg598930.aspx

Charles Petzold, author of the free book "Programming Windows Phone 7", has just published an interesting article discussing the difficulties developers face when attempting to simplify design for their apps. He follows with a description of the mental exercises he went through when creating a memo recorder from scratch. For those that are not programmers the text can get a little technical, but Charles provides a lot of worthwhile information for those looking to implement sound recording, playback, and storage in their apps.


Monday, September 13, 2010

Silverlight and Good Performance Can Peacefully Coexist?

Posted by Jon Westfall in "Windows Phone Developer" @ 03:30 PM

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_...ws-phone-7.aspx

"As you've probably read, here and elsewhere, Windows Phone 7 constituted a dramatic shift for Microsoft. For this release, we decided that the core principle would be about delivering outstanding phone based experiences to end users. This principle guided everything we did, and was the basis for all the prioritization decisions that were made. It meant in many cases we had to focus, and not do as much as we've historically done in a single release, (focus has not been a strength of ours), but the things we did, we wanted to be outstanding."

If you're still kinda leary about going to Silverlight versus the native controls you've had access in the past for performance reasons, this short blog post might help ease your mind and give you a starting point to see if it really is as bad as you think (Who knows, it might not be!). If you've already jumped head first into WP7 development, you may still find a gem you've missed.


Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Some of the Things Windows Phone 7 is Going to Lack

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Windows Phone Developer" @ 03:30 PM

http://dotnetref.blogspot.com/2010/..._medium=twitter

"While Windows Phone 7 (WP7) sounds intriguing as a platform for iPhone-type applications, TechEd 2010 was very illuminating on the many things that this new platform does not include and why you will unlikely be able to migrate your existing Windows Mobile applications forward. Let me go through the laundry list of the have-nots..."

Image courtesy of WMexperts

Moving to a completely new platform - and that's really what Windows Phone 7 is, despite it still be based on Windows CE - means having to start over. And having to start over means, at the start, things will be missing. From a developer's point of view, this is where things can get painful. The list of what's missing is pretty long, but some of them we already know, namely the lack of native code. If you're making games XNA Game Studio is a great tool - but if you're not making games, you're going to code in Silverlight, and that has a laundry list of limitations that go along with it. All told this is a pretty negative article - time will tell if creative developers can work around the limitations and deliver great apps. And, hopefully, Microsoft is keenly aware of what developers want next, and will add it.


Friday, May 21, 2010

More Windows Phone 7 Apps Written in Silverlight

Posted by Pete Paxton in "Windows Phone News" @ 07:00 AM

http://www.wmexperts.com/more-windo...rts+(WMExperts)

"The other day we mentioned how beneficial it will be for programmers to be able to write Windows Phone 7 applications in Silverlight (see "DroppyPop"), specifically we can run them in a web browser to demo them first or as an expansion. Today we have a few more apps to show from the blog by Sigurd Snørteland."

At first when I read this article I thought - big deal - so a clock and weather apps are written for Windows Phone 7 in Silverlight. But then I realized this is more about what can be done instead of what is being done. It opens the door for numerous apps to perhaps be ready by the time Windows Phone 7 devices are actually in the hands of consumers. So even though there's nothing earth shattering yet, hopefully we'll see numerous and perhaps very usable apps coming since the article claims developing apps is easy and fun.

Tags: silverlight

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Start Developing a Windows 7 Phone App With These Two Free West Coast Events

Posted by Jon Westfall in "Windows Phone Developer" @ 10:30 AM

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_...evelopment.aspx

"It is time to get a jump-start on building apps for Windows Phone 7 with this FREE 2-day hands-on training event. This is your opportunity to learn how to build Silverlight or XNA applications that take advantage of the many Windows Phone 7 platform features. We added few more seats to these two FREE events"

Got some time later this month and want to learn more about developing Silverlight or XNA Apps for Windows Phone 7? Can you get to Seattle or Santa Clara? Then sign up for these free events! More details on the Windows Blog!


Monday, April 12, 2010

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Released, Silverlight 4 Later This Week

Posted by Darius Wey in "Windows Phone Developer" @ 09:20 AM

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/

"Kicking off a global launch consisting of more than 150 developer-focused events, Microsoft Corp. announced the general availability of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. The company also announced that Silverlight 4 will release to Web (RTW) later in the week. Together, these technologies simplify the entire development process, enabling developers to target new platforms and build high-quality applications. Developers will be able to download Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 in conjunction with the Microsoft Visual Studio Conference & Expo launch event in Las Vegas."

Windows Phone and Zune developers, take note. Microsoft has three surprises for us this week. The first two are Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4, both of which have gone gold. All four versions of the former are available for purchase; alternatively, if you're an MSDN subscriber, you'll find everything you need in the Subscriber Downloads section. And as for the much-anticipated Silverlight 4, it'll make an appearance later in the week.


Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Netflix For Windows Phone 7

Posted by Ed Hansberry in "Windows Phone News" @ 06:00 AM

Engadget is reporting from Mix10 and has taken some shots of a new Netflix app for Windows Phone 7 Series. It is just a prototype and may or may not be released in its current form. What separates it from other Netflix mobile apps is this one isn't just about managing your queue. You can instantly watch the same movies that could be streamed to your TiVo or X-Box. As Engadget says, this shows the power of Silverlight on the platform.

There is also a short 2-3 minute video of the presentation demoing what it would be like to watch a movie on your phone from Netflix.


Monday, March 15, 2010

Highlights From The MIX10 Keynote!

Posted by Jon Westfall in "Windows Phone Developer" @ 10:00 AM

MIX10 is on now in Las Vegas and while I'm not there personally (unfortunately I'm in dreary Manhattan this morning) I do have some great tidbits from Scott Guthrie & Joe Belfiore. Here's the lowdown:

  • The Mobile device application story is this: Silverlight for Internet-based applications, and XNA for gaming.
  • Free developer tools: Expression Blend, and Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone.
  • Windows Phone Marketplace is getting one-time credit card transactions, mobile-operator based billing, and advertising-funded applications!
  • Silverlight 4 Release Candidate and Expression Blend beta 4 are on their way!

And if that's not enough, you can keep up on all of the action at MIX here!


Friday, March 5, 2010

WP7S: The Backwards Compatibility Story Thickens

Posted by Jon Westfall in "Windows Phone Developer" @ 01:30 PM

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/04/...t-ahead-of-gdc/

"One final note at today's event is that Microsoft has now officially confirmed for the first time that 7 represents a clean break from Windows Mobile as we know it today; existing apps won't be compatible. Though that's likely to be a pain for existing owners with specialized apps who are looking to stay in the Microsoft ecosystem, Windows Phone 7 Series itself is a very different beast than the operating system it replaces -- it feels different, seeks a different demographic, and symbolically represents a very important clean-slate departure for a company that had lost its way in the mobile space. The bright side for the 6.5 faithful, we suppose, is that Kindel closes by saying that they "will continue to work with our partners to deliver new devices based on Windows Mobile 6.5 and will support those products for many years to come" -- a message Microsoft has been echoing recently."

In case you hadn't heard deduced this, our favorite third party apps won't work with Windows Phone 7 out of the box. Will this mean that developers will flock to technologies such as XNA and Silverlight to re-design their apps? Or do you think they may just leave the platform?


Thursday, March 4, 2010

Windows Phone 7 Series Developer Info Starts to Flow

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Windows Phone Developer" @ 09:52 PM

http://blogs.msdn.com/ckindel/archi...experience.aspx

"Different is often good. Especially when it's different for good reasons. Windows Phone 7 Series is different because we reset everything we were doing to focus on end user experience. This extends directly to the developer platform. Developers, designers, and producers of applications, games, and content these days are demanding that we be different as well. Over the last year we've had face to face conversations with 100s of developers all over the world about what we should do with Windows Phone 7 Series."

I think the above screen shot is fantastic, because it shows exactly how different Windows phone 7 really is - there's a strong sense of sameness as you move from left to right, but when you hit the Windows phone 7 user interface, you have to stop and take note that it's completely different from the others. Microsoft is taking a big risk by breaking away from the pack of normalcy every other mobile phone OS brings to the table. Read more...


Friday, November 7, 2008

Silverlight Applications on Windows Mobile

Posted by Darius Wey in "Pocket PC Developer" @ 08:50 AM

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/PC10/

"Wouldn't it be super cool if the Silverlight apps you built for the desktop could run on Millions of Mobile Devices? If you have been building Silverlight applications and are wondering how to extend them to mobile devices, then this webcast is the one to watch. In this webcast you will not only learn how to extend your existing Silverlight 2 applications to work on Windows Mobile, but also learn how to build rich mobile Silverlight apps that play media, handle simple gestures, have cool animations, and enable web services."

Public availability of Silverlight for Mobile isn't expected until early next year, but if you want a head-start on extending your existing Silverlight apps to mobile devices, then this PDC session is worth a look. And, if you want more, Amit Chopra offers an overview of each of the demos.


Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Silverlight for Windows Mobile Demo Videos

Posted by Rocco Augusto in "Smartphone Software" @ 05:01 PM

http://www.wmexperts.com/articles/s...ows_mobile.html

"Although we briefly mentioned Silverlight for Windows Mobile a couple days ago, we added the fact that it would be arriving this Spring (specifically, “Q2”). Want more proof? Check out these Demo videos of Silverlight's UI abilities. They're pretty low-rent looking, but what's engaging is that it appears that Silverlight developers will be able to take advantage of them without much complex coding."


Video: Silverlight Mobile Demo - MIX

This is not the greatest demo in the world, but it is nice to see that the Silverlight platform is starting to mature into something that is usable, especially on the mobile front. Now if only Microsoft would stop teasing us with news and video demos and give us the actual software to play with. I for one am excited by the notion of creating fancy rich media applications!


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