From Android to Windows Phone

Windows Phone From Scratch #43

This is the first in a series of mini-tutorials and related content on moving applications from Android to Windows Phone.Android Tip Calculator

CalcpTo get us started, let’s take a look at a simple Android application that takes an amount and computes the total with an 18% tip.  We’ll then rebuild it in Windows Phone.

 

 

Continue reading →

Posted in Migration, Mini-Tutorial, WindowsPhone | Tagged | 6 Comments

Testing Network Availability

Windows Phone From Scratch #42

 

We would like to live in a world in which any time you turn  your phone on the helloworld network is there, full strength.  We’d also like to live in a world of peace and harmony.

Until all of this is accomplished, however, you will need to test for network availability and handle those unfortunate moments when the network is not available.

To do so, you can call upon two useful features of the NetworkInformation namespace: the NetworkAddressChanged event and the GetIsNetworkAvailable method.

Continue reading →

Posted in Essentials, Mini-Tutorial, WindowsPhone | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

The Work I Think I Do And The Work I Do.

Periodically, I step up my organizational skills or tools or both (usually after being yelled at for missing something!).  Lately, I’ve been doing TimeSnapperthis more intensively as I’m working on a number of different projects and I need to ensure that each is getting its share of my time. 

To manage this, I decided to budget a certain amount of time each day to each activity. To be realistic, I allocated the time on a weekly basis, as each day can be somewhat different depending on what comes over the threshold.

Here is my budget 

Continue reading →

Posted in Community, Opinion | 5 Comments

Programming C# Book Winners…

Please be sure to send me your full mailing address and your email address and the name you use to sign on to my site.  Once confirmed, all of the books will be going out immediately.

My apologies for the delay.

Posted in Community | 5 Comments

Silverlight Unit Test For Phone

Windows Phone From Scratch #41

 

There has been some confusion about how to make the Silverlight Unit Tests work on FAILEDUNITTESTWindows Phone.  The latest release of the Silverlight Unit Tests comes with the Silverlight Toolkit, and it targeted at Silverlight 4.  Windows Phone is based on an enhanced version of Silverlight 3 and cannot use these DLLs.

Fortunately, Jeff Willcox has made the right DLLs available on his web site.

Silverlight 3 binaries for the Silverlight Unit Test Framework

Continue reading →

Posted in Essentials, Mini-Tutorial, SL Unit Tests | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Yet Another Podcast #27–Paul Betts

Paul Betts works in Office Labs at Microsoft and is the creator of Reactive UI – an MVVM PBettes framework based on Reactive Extensions.

Listen| Return to Yet Another Podcast

Call in comments:  1-347-YAP-CAST

rssiTunesalt

Posted in Linq, Podcast, Reactive | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Yet Another Podcast #26–Walt Ritscher

WaltRitscherBW

Walt is a .NET programmer and UX enthusiast.  His current UI obsession includes Silverlight, Windows  Phone 7  and WPF APIs. His blog can be found at blog.wpfwonderland.com. Walt is also a MVP and the author of the free Shazzam Shader Editor.

Links

http://Blog.wpfwonderland.com 

http://Shazzam-tool.com

http://www.wintellect.com/Training/Courses/Mastering-Windows-Presentation-Foundation

http://Lynda.com/waltritscher 

 

Listen| Return to Yet Another Podcast

Call in comments:  1-347-YAP-CAST

rssiTunesalt

Posted in Data, Essentials, Patterns & Skills, Podcast, Tools and Utilities, WindowsPhone | Tagged | 1 Comment

Reactive Extensions–More About Chaining

Reactive Programming, Posting # 10

In the previous posting on Reactive Extensions, we created an application that calls onarc of history the Bing translation service to translate a phrase into Japanese, and then back into English.  This allowed the introduction of the SelectMany operator. 

In this posting we’ll ask the Bing Translation service for a list of every language it knows about, and then we’ll translate a phrase into each language in turn.  This will highlight the chaining aspect of SelectMany.  (Click on image to see full size).

Continue reading →

Posted in Mini-Tutorial, Reactive | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

The Full Stack 8–Adding Search to the Phone Client

Part 8 in the Full Stack series in which Jon and I are building an entire application from conception to delivery that includes MVC 3 ASP.NET, Silverlight and Windows Phone.

Also available on Channel 9

Posted in Full Stack, WindowsPhone | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Select Many: Reactive Extensions’ Mother Of All Operators [Chaining]

Reactive Programming, Posting # 9

Reactive Extensions (Rx) has a number of operators that we’ve looked at already, DoubleTranslationincluding Select, Throttle, Subscribe and so forth.  While SelectMany is not the most important Rx operator, it is surely the most powerful.

SelectMany’s principal job is to allow you to select against an IObservable<T>, run a func<u> and get back an IObservable<u>

IObservable<U> SelectMany(IObservable<T>, func<U>)

Read that in your head “SelectMany takes an IObservable of T and a func (funk) of U and returns an IObservable of U.”

Today we’ll take a look at the case of having a  function that returns an IObservable and you wish to then pass the results to a function that returns an IObservable. That is, the case where you wan to chain calls.   If you were to use Select, you would end up with an IObservable<IObservable<T>> which is not what you want. SelectMany flattens that for you.

Continue reading →

Posted in Patterns & Skills, Reactive, WindowsPhone | Tagged | 5 Comments

Sterling DB on top of Isolated Storage – 2

Windows Phone From Scratch #39

 

In yesterday’s posting we looked at the Sterling Database. and how to set up and initialize tables, store an retrieve data.  Today we’ll build on that to set up the database in App.xaml so that we can handle tombstoning.

Continue reading →

Posted in Patterns & Skills | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

When Isolated Storage Isn’t Enough

Windows Phone From Scratch #38

When you wish to persist state across usages of your application, Isolated Storage allows you to write to the disk and stash away key-value pairs.  For state, this is usually sufficient, but if what you wish to persist is data, especially relational data, then Isolated Storage is a bit limiting.

To meet this need for a more robust data storage scheme, a number of libraries have been developed that work on top of isolated storage.  This posting is the first in a series that will examine these options; beginning with the Sterling Database.

Continue reading →

Posted in Patterns & Skills | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments