Cool app! Spritemapper is an application that merges multiple images into one
and generates CSS positioning for the corresponding slices.
Read more...
From the VBTeam
I have experienced lot of fun creating Windows Phone 7 applications in Visual Basic and writing about them here. In our last post,
I explained how to create a Bing Maps application for Windows Phone 7.
In this blog, I want to share a sample that will help you to create a
settings page for Windows Phone 7. This application will display two
setting pages - one where the setting changes will be updated
immediately, and the other where the user will have to confirm the
changes.
I will now demonstrate how easy it is
to create a settings page for Windows Phone 7, using Visual Basic for
Windows Phone Developer Tools. The settings page can be created in 6
simple steps as follows:
- Create a sample application and add controls
- Create a settings class
- Create a settings page that does not require a confirmation button
- Create a settings page that requires a confirmation button
- Build and debug the application
- Rebuild in the release mode before publishing
Read more...
Today almost all web sites are designed to operate on a desktop or laptop computer. Anyone operating marketing, ecommerce, information or entertainment web sites now needs to consider the mobile phone when designing content and services. Mobile web sites development is increasing day by day and so is the number of different mobile devices trying to access the web sites.
Major problems for web developers for mobile website development are following:
* Detect mobile device and redirect user to mobile website E.g. practical client requirement: Apple users should be redirected to an Apple theme URL, RIM (BlackBerry) users should be redirected to a Blackberry theme URL and all other mobile devices should be redirected to a standard mobile theme URL.
* Mobile device database to fetch mobile capabilities in order to deliver the best possible experience to mobile users
E.g. does this phone support java or flash, or what kind of entry method is available, such as a qwerty keyboard or a touch screen?
Read more...
Data storage and access is nearly an eternal topic in all kinds of
applications. In Windows Phone 7, data manipulation still plays a
fundamental and important role. Regrettably, in the current Windows
Phone 7 Series there is no local database API that can be used. Windows
Phone 7, though, does support access to data in several ways: XML,
Isolated Storage, and Cloud Storage. In this article I will introduce to
you how to handle XML data in Windows Phone 7 for Silverlight
applications. In detail, we'll explore three cases: how to load and
render a local resource-formed XML file; how to abstract components
hidden inside an XAML (XML form in essence) file, and how to obtain
remote XML data via a simple RSS reader sample.
Read more...
Isolated Storage aims to enable managed applications to create and maintain local storage. In Windows Phone 7 Silverlight-based applications, all I/O operations are restricted to isolated storage and do not have direct access to the underlying OS file system. Windows Phone application developers owe the ability to store data locally on the phone, leveraging all the benefits of isolated storage, such as providing security and preventing unauthorized access and data corruption from other applications.
As you may image, in Windows Phone 7 programming Isolated Storage manipulation is as important as memory handling in traditional desktop applications. So, in this article we are still going to focus upon the fundamentals associated with Isolated Storage via simple yet typical sample applications.
Read more....
UPDATE: Phoney now has a NuGet package. Search on NuGet to add Phoney to your project!
I started this project when I found I had a number of small classes that I'd built for my Windows Phone 7 application so I thought it was time to share. here is the information on the new library.
It is currently in a very early Alpha stage, but I expect to have it
at a release version by MIX 11 (Mid-April). Let me know what you think!
By Shawn Wildermuth
Read more...
WP7 Isolated Storage Explorer is a tool designed to help developers
and testers interact with the isolated storage file for Silverlight
Windows Phone 7 applications.
The explorer can work both as a desktop application for testers or integrated in Visual Studio for developers.
Whenever
a WP7 application/project involves storing data locally the the device,
it will be to the isolated storage file. A common difficulty is
accessing the data for testing or rapidly restoring the application's
data/state after the isolated storage has been reset, usually during the
testing and development life-cycle.
One of the usual workarounds
has been to add code to handle data transfers (to a WCF service or a
remote Web Service) or just hard code test data, but this takes a lot of
time and migrating the code from one project to another can take
significant effort.
To help solve these issues and facilitate
faster development for a WP7 application, the WP7 Isolated Storage
Explorer includes the following features designed to make your life
easier:
- Easy installer. One simple setup file that sets everything up on a development or testing machine.
- Easy integration. Add a single reference to your project and one line of code and you're done.
- Display the isolated storage file from multiple applications at the same time.
- Desktop client that handles all the common operations.
The client handles operations such as bidirectional file transfer,
creating folders, deleting files and folders and can perform parallel
operations on multiple remote applications
- The same intuitive client integrated in Visual Studio. Developers can debug and check the data in the isolated storage file without leaving the IDE.
- Works in the background so your phone application will not be interrupted by operations. The explorer has been tested to handle invalid operations gracefully and to not interfere with the application's purpose.
Check here...
This post try to address an issue with the Microsoft Advertising SDK, the main fact that today Microsoft is still refusing access to the Ad Center worldwide.
Yesterday they generously increase the number of free apps we can develop from 5 to 100. According to talks with other developers and the Windows Phone 7 team, I have the strong feeling the model of publishing free apps supported by apps is the right course to take today.
This probably why Microsoft has moved to a bigger figure.
Am I the only software shop concerns by the lack of support tools fro WP7 outside the US? I don't think so.
So currently I am trying to seek alternatives.
First AdDuplex. The name is abit misleading, this is more like a link exchange system and it works quite well. But it won't give me any revenue even if it increase the visibility of my apps.
Then one popular one is AdMob. However the lack of true WP7 Api make its implementation very difficult. A solution exist but it didn't work for me.
The one I had real hope was Smaato. True Api, easy to implement. Unfortunatly it's really buggy. If you need to use IsolationStorage in your app (who doesn't) this kit delete your keys without reasons. Smaato is aware of the bug but seems to be verys low on the answer department.
Finally by pure randomness, I found ZestAdz and they have released a native Api for WP7. However forget their support it's really too slow to get some answer to a basic question. At the moment I try the sample provided but no ads appears.
I have also no idea if Microsoft will approve an app with Google ads. It is not really difficult to code, but due to the lengthy approval process, I don't want to be the guinea pig in that domain.
So at the moment I am left with no real strong solutions. Smaato display the ads but with a slight delay and the ad look and feel is really poor.
If only they could fix their Api quickly it might be an intermediate solution until Microsoft finally push their borders to the world.
This post is an overview of the new Coding4Fun Windows Phone Toolkit.
It offers developers additional controls and helper classes for Windows
Phone 7 application development, designed to match the rich user
experience of the Windows Phone 7. The official Coding4Fun tools
were released yesterday by the Microsoft Coding4fun team, as always the
full source code and a sample test project are also available (the
whole toolkit is completely FREE). Some of the "geeks" involved in this
cool project are: Jeff Wilcox, Thomas Claudius Huber, Kevin Marshall, Stephanie Hertrich and others.
Read more...
FollowMyFeedallows you to quickly create your Windows Phone 7 application for free without any technical knowledge.
More Posts
Next page »