Silverlight might be dead…

1 Mar

For the last year (or so) it has been official that Silverlight have reached a point of maturity. From Microsoft’s point of view it means that it will not be updated as often as we have seen previously. Many see this as if the technology is dead.

In some sense I agree – a technology that won’t be upgraded is as good as dead.

Only issue here is that Silverlight is still an amazing technology and one of the best technologies for building true Line-of-Business applications for the browser and the desktop. My company still builds several Silverlight based applications – there are no real alternatives.

With that in mind Windows Developers in Denmark are pleased to announce that we have teamed up with Packt Publishing and are organizing a give away especially for you. All you need to do is just comment below this post and win a free copy of “Instant Silverlight 5 Animation” – three lucky winners stand a chance to win an e-copy. Head on over to this page and look through the product description of these books and drop a line via the comments below to let us know what interests you the most about these books. It’s that simple.

The contest is only for members of Windows Developers in Denmark and will close on 6. March 2013 . Winners will be contacted by email, so be sure to use your real email address when you comment!

// thomas

Code Sample Browser

18 Feb

Yesterday I had the pleasure of talking to a guy from the Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework team. He introduced me to a Code Sample Browser app for Windows Store that gives developers a way to search, download and browse over 4500 code samples from MSDN Samples Gallery. The Sample Browser is also available for the Desktop.

// thomas

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Free books from Syncfusion

15 Feb

Syncfusion is one the companies providing qualified products and material to developers all over the world. I have used their components in several of my Windows Phone and Windows Store applications.

Syncfusion offer several free e-books written by talented experts who are personally selected by Syncfusion. The goal for each book is to take 500+ pages of information on topics such as ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, HTTP, etc., and condense it to about 100 pages of essentials.

Personally I recommend the updated version of their white paper “Windows 8: What It Means for Development Decisions Today and in the Future”.

// thomas

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Surface WinRT available in DK

23 Jan

Today Microsoft announced that Surface Windows 8 Pro will be available start on Feb. 9 through all Microsoft retail stores and from microsoftstore.com. This is really great news! I love my WinRT and I have high hopes for the pro edition.

At the same time it was announced that Surface WinRT will be available to 13 additional markets in the coming weeks – including Denmark! Finally! Looking forward to see through which stores it will be possible to buy them in Denmark.

The parameter is incorrect

17 Dec

For the last couple of months we have been working on some different Windows Phone projects. Yesterday we ran into an exception in one of our projects. Sometimes when we navigated into a specific page we got an argument exception “The parameter is incorrect”. The exception was inconsistent but we got it more often when debugging compared to when we ran our project in release mode.

2012-12-17_013042

First step was of course to enable as much debugging info as possible which resulted in this StackTrace:

at MS.Internal.XcpImports.CheckHResult(UInt32 hr)
at MS.Internal.XcpImports.Collection_AddValue[T](PresentationFrameworkCollection`1 collection, CValue value)
at MS.Internal.XcpImports.Collection_AddDependencyObject[T](PresentationFrameworkCollection`1 collection, DependencyObject value)
at System.Windows.PresentationFrameworkCollection`1.AddDependencyObject(DependencyObject value)
at System.Windows.Controls.UIElementCollection.AddInternal(UIElement value)
at System.Windows.PresentationFrameworkCollection`1.Add(UIElement value)
at System.Windows.Controls.ItemsControl.AddVisualChild(Int32 index, DependencyObject container, Boolean needPrepareContainer)
at System.Windows.Controls.ItemsControl.AddContainers()
at System.Windows.Controls.ItemsControl.RecreateVisualChildren(IntPtr unmanagedObj)
at MS.Internal.XcpImports.MeasureOverrideNative(IntPtr element, Single inWidth, Single inHeight, Single& outWidth, Single& outHeight)
at MS.Internal.XcpImports.FrameworkElement_MeasureOverride(FrameworkElement element, Size availableSize)
at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.MeasureOverride(Size availableSize)
at Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Pivot.MeasureOverride(Size availableSize)
at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.MeasureOverride(IntPtr nativeTarget, Double inWidth, Double inHeight, Double& outWidth, Double& outHeight)
at MS.Internal.XcpImports.MeasureOverrideNative(IntPtr element, Single inWidth, Single inHeight, Single& outWidth, Single& outHeight)
at MS.Internal.XcpImports.FrameworkElement_MeasureOverride(FrameworkElement element, Size availableSize)
at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.MeasureOverride(Size availableSize)
at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.MeasureOverride(IntPtr nativeTarget, Double inWidth, Double inHeight, Double& outWidth, Double& outHeight)
at MS.Internal.XcpImports.MeasureOverrideNative(IntPtr element, Single inWidth, Single inHeight, Single& outWidth, Single& outHeight)
at MS.Internal.XcpImports.FrameworkElement_MeasureOverride(FrameworkElement element, Size availableSize)
at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.MeasureOverride(Size availableSize)
at Microsoft.Phone.Controls.PhoneApplicationFrame.MeasureOverride(Size availableSize)
at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.MeasureOverride(IntPtr nativeTarget, Double inWidth, Double inHeight, Double& outWidth, Double& outHeight)

The page was actually pretty simple – a Pivot control with 4 items each containing a usercontrol. So with the StackTrace in mind we looked for some dynamically sized controls within our usercontrols . First of all we tried to change the Pivot control with a Panorama control – still got the exception. So we had to go through our code and line by line we removed content – still got the exception. In the end we had removed all the content inside our usercontrols and the page was stripped down to contain only the most necessary properties. Still got the exception.

In the end I stumbled upon the naming of our usercontrols – not in the page but the x:name within the usercontrol itself. Some of the usercontrols had been giving names that was used as part of some animation. What caught my eye was that two of the usercontrols got the same x:name. I tried to change one of the names and boom! Problem solved.

So to take this little issue to the test I created a small sample demonstrating the issue. The sample automatically navigates from one page to another and back until the exception is through (takes about 2-5 minutes).

The issue is on both Windows Phone SDK 7.1 and 8.0.

// thomas

Spotify – we will do your Windows Store app for free!

14 Dec

It’s a shame to see that Spotify still isn’t available for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8. I understand that they probably have a big backlog and can’t have apps of this size available in just a few weeks.

However Windows 8 have been available for some months now and we haven’t heard anything from Spotify about a realistic release date. The result is obvious – users cancel their subscriptions and find another musicplayer. Just check out the forums and the comments in this thread – users have an excellent alternative in Xbox music.

A few weeks back my team and I decided to take a radical step – we offered Spotify to do the Windows 8 app – for free. We have developed our share of apps for the Windows Store; 20+ apps ranging from video-on-demand apps to homebanking apps.

We still haven’t heard anything from Spotify.

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Windows-8-Metro-App/idc-p/223348#M14834

Resource Dictionary for Windows Phone

6 Nov

One of the missing templates in the Windows Phone SDK is Resource Dictionaries. If you work with styles and resource dictionaries, the missing template is a big thing.

Worry no more! I have created the template you need!

You can get them ItemTemplate from my SkyDrive and install it in your ItemTemplate folder, typically located here:
C:\Users\[USERNAME]\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Templates\ItemTemplates\Visual C#\Windows Phone\1033

// thomas

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