Articles

Javascript, WTF?

A JavaScript article in Silverlightshow?

Web Development + Win 8?

What’s going on here !?!?

Before you stop reading let me introduce myself, I’m a Silverlight MVP (early joiner when there was a 1.1 alpha version), I love XAML + MVVM + Blend, and I was one of the dudes that run away from the JavaScript hell when I discovered the power of XAML + C# running inside a web browser.

As a Silverlight Developer and freelancer most of the projects that I’ve been working on were LOB apps running behind a firewall….

I know, as a XAML developer, you are probably confident that you own the better way for writing stunning interfaces, with a productive timing, a consistent toolset and a powerful language like C# that is a sweet juice. I'm also pretty sure that HTML people is completely confortable on its side and do not feel the need of moving to another language. Unfortunately, landing on the real world, these strong reasons are not so strong for all the people, and often you are forced to rely on something you'd not use under normal conditions, as an example because your customer has some constraints that prevent you from use your consolidated XAML or HTML5 knowledge but wants the other.

Now that Windows 8 has been around in its final form for almost a year, developers are getting used to the new platform. Lots of paradigms that have been around for many years in the Windows environment however have changed with the new course that Microsoft is sailing with the introduction of Metro (aka Modern UI aka Windows Store) apps.

Personally, one of the most striking differences between the desktop mode and the Windows 8 environment is without a doubt the way Windows handles multiple processes. In other words, background processing and the process lifecycle of Windows 8 applications.

Since the birth of Google Maps in early 2005, the mapping systems have grown significantly and become part of the business in different ways. There are plenty of opportunities in connecting today's modern devices, equipped with GPS sensors, together with maps and it is the reason because Bing has continuously delivered new versions of its own mapping controls, from the web version to Silverlight and finally for the Windows Store apps.

This new release comes in a separate download that can be easily found using the Visual Studio's extension manager, but it requires some kind of attention given its nature of a C++ component.

UPDATE: This article was updated because the name of the guidance changed from it’s code name “Kona” to “Prism for Windows Runtime” for release. The content has not really changed since the original article, just updates for changes in the name of the guidance and for the change in code namespaces.

This is part 2 in the series WinRT Business Apps with Prism.

Introduction

In Part 1 of this series I covered the background of what Prism for Windows Runtime is and got you started building an app reusing the Microsoft.Practices.Prism.StoreApps project that contains the reusable code library of Prism. The sample application I put together in Part 1 was not very impressive, after seven steps, you had nothing more than a “Hello World” kind of application. But what may not have been apparent is that those steps let you lay down the foundation on which you could build a big, complex Windows Store business application with Prism, using the MVVM pattern, integrating with the navigation system, handling state management in the face of suspend/terminate easily and more.

Welcome to the last part of this deep-dive on MVVM. In this last part, we are going to continue our exploration of the MVVM implementation of the ContosoCookbook application. We are going to look at tiles and push notifications in combination with an MVVM architecture first. Secondly, we’ll take a look at managing the state, again from an MVVM perspective. Finally, we are going to write unit tests for the viewmodels.

As a reminder, please take a look at the Advanced MVVM webinar we’ve done here at SilverlightShow here.

Welcome to part 2 of this deep-dive analysis of a complete MVVM application. In part 1, we’ve discussed the architecture, explained the DI container and have detailed the NavigationService. In this second part, we will continue to explore more advanced concepts around MVVM.

These articles are a companion to the Advanced MVVM webinar that I hosted at SilverlightShow. You can look at the recorded webcast here.

Accessing data using a repository and the data service layer abstraction

Almost every Windows 8 Store application will need data to perform its job.

MVVM – or the Model-View-ViewModel pattern – is still a hot topic. It is the architectural pattern that many XAML developers have been using to build their applications in WPF, Windows Phone and Silverlight. It’s also great to build Windows 8 Store applications. Here at SilverlightShow, we’ve recently done a 3-part article series that received a lot of interesting feedback. I recommend to read these articles before starting with these, since we are not talking about the base concepts explained in those articles.

Part of the last article was a detailed look at the possibility of speech recognition from within your app. A logical continuation of this technology and feature is to seek deeper integration with the operating system by using voice commands. Voice commands are a way for you to register certain phrases with the Windows Phone OS that are recognized when the user invokes the built-in voice recognition, without your app being active or even launched. In this article I will explain what it takes to use this feature, and what you can achieve with it.