Category Archives: Essentials

Test Driven Development–Testing Private Values

Posted on November 25, 2011 by Jesse Liberty

Jon Galloway and I are embarking on the next phase of our Full Stack project and building a Pomodoro timer.  We are (at lest for now) doing this using Test Driven Development.  This immediately raised an interesting issue, which I … Continue reading →

Posted in Essentials, Patterns & Skills, TDD | Tagged , | 13 Comments

Yet Another Podcast #52–Peter Torr on Windows Phone Multitasking

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Jesse Liberty

Peter Torr joins Jon Galloway and me to discuss multi-tasking, background agents, the backstack and other new features in Mango. Peter’s Blog Back Means Back   Listen | Yet Another Podcast Call in comments: 1-347-YAP-CAST

Posted in Background Agents, Essentials, Mango, Multitasking, WindowsPhone | Tagged | 3 Comments

The Full Stack, Phase 2–Overview

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Jesse Liberty

Windows Phone Tutorial Last year Jon Galloway and I launched the Full Stack experiment,in which we video-documented the creation of a nontrivial application. Today we begin the second phase of this experiment, building a new application that will have implementations … Continue reading →

Posted in Background Agents, Blend, Data, Essentials, Full Stack, Linq, Mango, Mini-Tutorial, Multitasking, MVC, Patterns & Skills, SL Unit Tests, Toolkit, UI, Visual Studio, WindowsPhone | Tagged | Comments Off on The Full Stack, Phase 2–Overview

On Comments

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Jesse Liberty

I received this email today:  I bought your book “Teach yourself C++ in 1 Hour a Day” and on page 37 you say  that “The bottom line is that comments should not say what is happening, they should say why … Continue reading →

Posted in Essentials | 3 Comments

Yet Another Podcast #51–Shawn Wildermuth: //build, Xaml Programming & Beyond

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Jesse Liberty

Talking with Shawn Wildermuth & Jon Galloway about the //Build conference, Xaml programming in the post-//build world, exciting opportunities in learning new platforms, his forthcoming books and courses and much more.  Shawn’s Blog Shawn’s Book Shawn’s Company Listen | Yet … Continue reading →

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Background Audio

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Jesse Liberty

Windows Phone Tutorial When you are playing audio in your application you may not want that audio to stop when the user switches to another application.  Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) brings Background Audio using the BackgroundAudioPlayer. In my previous post … Continue reading →

Posted in Background Agents, Essentials, Mango, Mini-Tutorial, Multitasking, WindowsPhone | Tagged | 10 Comments

Migrating From WP7 to Mango–Fast Application Switching

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Jesse Liberty

A Windows Phone Mini-Series In part 1 of this series, I provided links to downloading and installing Windows Phone Mango.  In this, part 2, I’ll provide links about one of the most important new features for Windows Phone Mango: Fast … Continue reading →

Posted in Essentials, Mango, Migration, Multitasking | Tagged | 1 Comment

Yet Another Podcast #50–Rob Cameron: What’s New In Windows 7.5 (Mango)

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Jesse Liberty

Talking with Rob Cameron, Architect Evangelist for Microsoft, and APress author of Pro Windows Phone 7 Development. Listen | Yet Another Podcast Call in comments: 1-347-YAP-CAST

Posted in Essentials, Mango, Migration, Podcast, WindowsPhone | Tagged | 1 Comment

Drag and Drop in 30 Seconds

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Jesse Liberty

If this doesn’t convince you that it is worthwhile to learn Blend and Behaviors… Open a new phone project in Blend and drag a shape onto the artboard (e.g., an ellipse). Click on Assets –> Behaviors and drag  MouseDragElementBehavior onto … Continue reading →

Posted in Blend, Essentials, Mango, Mini-Tutorial | Tagged | 3 Comments

Adding Icons to the DateTime Picker

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Jesse Liberty

Windows Phone Tutorial If you just add a DateTime Picker (from the Windows Phone Toolkit) to your application, it will work but its icons will be very unsatisfactory – just a pair of X’s.  To get the proper icons, follow … Continue reading →

Posted in Essentials, Mango, Mini-Tutorial, UI | Tagged | 5 Comments

Windows Phone WCF OData Client

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Jesse Liberty

Windows Phone Tutorial In a recent posting I showed how to create a quick OData service using Entity-Framework Code-First and SQLCE4.  In this posting I’ll show how to create a simple Windows Phone client to interact with that service.

Posted in Data, Essentials, Mango, Mini-Tutorial, Patterns & Skills, WindowsPhone | Tagged | 1 Comment

Yet Another Podcast #49–Jon Galloway: What’s New In ASP.NET

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Jesse Liberty

Talking with Jon Galloway about what’s new in the ASP.NET family, including previews of MVC 4, Visual Studio 11, Web Forms 4.5 and WCF Web API. Jon’s Blog ASP.NET VNext site MVC 4 Site Road Map Jon’s Book Listen | … Continue reading →

Posted in Blend, Essentials, HTML5, Languages, MVC, Podcast, Visual Studio | Tagged | Comments Off on Yet Another Podcast #49–Jon Galloway: What’s New In ASP.NET