Windows 8.1: The new less-known features that will improve your work
Author: Andrea Boschin
Price: $2.99 
Format: Word, PDF, MOBI, EPUB, source code
Number of pages: 66
Release date: February 2014
From the author: As often happens, the time-frame passed between the release of Windows 8 and the new release numbered 8.1 have brought to the light some things that developers felt missing during their work. Many of these are simply obvious features left behind just for time issues, others are answers to new needs that could not be imagined in the first release, and others again are some effective behaviors proposed by some successful application. In this SilverlightShow ebook, we'll explore the new less-known features that could be of help when you're developing your next Windows 8.1 application.
Contents:
Chapter 1: Behaviors SDK - Part #1
Windows 8.1 and the Behaviors SDK
An easy example: EventTriggerBehavior
Introducing the DataTriggerBehavior
About Other Actions
Chapter 2: Behaviors SDK - Part #2
Actions or Behaviors?
Create a simple trigger behavior
Camera... Action!
Why and when?
Chapter 3: Exploring new controls (Hub, CommandBar, Flyouts and Pickers)
The missing pickers and flyouts
Simplify your AppBar experience: the CommandBar
Enhance the apps with the Hub control
Take it under control.
Chapter 4: Location-aware apps - Part #1: What's new in geolocation
At the basic.
Getting the position
Slice the world
Workin' on the go...
Chapter 5: Animations and transitions
XAML and HTML: two different ways
Handling the lifetime.
Taking advantage of animation and transitions
Chapter 6: Location-aware apps - Part #2: Working in background
Location aware background tasks
Geofencing in background
Improved location-awareness
Chapter 7: Play with Bluetooth Rfcomm
How it works
Connect WP8 and W8.1 over bluetooth
When to use bluetooth?
Chapter 8: Application Views improvements
Application View and the basics
Working with multiple views
Animate the transitions
Application switching and protocols
Chapter 9: Improved device interactions
Appointments and Contacts
Interact with libraries
Manage the touch keyboard
Chapter 10: Alarm and Lock screen call toasts
Send alarm toasts
Handle incoming calls
A toolkit to generate toast xml
Chapter 11: Create a PDF Viewer with new PDF API
Windows.Data.Pdf
Create a simple PDF reader
Implement a simple zoom
Try by yourself
Chapter 12: The Windows Search API
The Windows.Storage.Search namespace
Performing a search
Using appcontent-ms files
About the author:
Andrea Boschin is a Silverlight MVP from Italy who currently lives and works in Treviso, a beautiful town near Venice. He started to work in the IT relatively late after doing some various jobs like graphic designer and school teacher. Finally he started to work into the web and learned by himself to program in VB and ASP and later in C# and ASP.NET. Since the start of his work, Andrea found he likes to learn new technologies and take them into the real world. This happened with ASP.NET, the source of his first two MVP awards, and recently with Silverlight, that he started to use from the v1.0 in some real projects.
Andrea blogs at http://silverlightplayground.org/ and tweets from @aboschin.