Uncategorized – Page 2 – Low Code Life

Building Back-end Data and Services for Windows 8 Apps: OData – Part 2

In part 1 of this post, I showed how to create a SQL database in Windows Azure, create a schema for adding leaderboard functionality to a game, create an Entity Framework model for the database, and then create and test a WCF Data Service on top of the model that provides a rich REST-style interaction model with great query support via OData. If you have not yet read part 1, you should do so before continuing.

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Building Back-end Data and Services for Windows 8 Apps: OData – Part 1

UPDATE: Part 2 of this post is now published as well.

It’s been longer than I planned, but this post is a follow-up to my overview post, “Building Data and Services for Windows 8 Apps”. In that post, I outlined a couple of different ways that you can build out data storage and services to provide a back-end for your Windows 8 app (and of course, these services can be shared with other apps as well).

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W8WIL #8: Creating Your Store Logo

If you’ve spent any time at all browsing the Windows Store, you may have noticed that there are more than a few apps that show up with the default store logo, which is a simple box with an X through it. The default logo included with the Visual Studio project templates is intended to look unfinished, so that developers will hopefully replace this logo with one that’s appropriately branded for their app. Here’s what one of these apps looks like (I’ve obscured the name of the app to avoid embarrassing the developer):

Notice that the app doesn’t have a great rating. Not necessarily a direct result of not having a nice store logo, but it doesn’t leave a great impression with potential customers.

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W8WIL #7: Uniquely Identifying Items in the Grid App JS Template

In this installment of Windows 8: What I’ve learned, I’ll discuss a bug in my app that came from a poor understanding of the underlying template I’d built on.

Getting Started with a Template

To jump start the development of my Windows Store app, Community Megaphone, I used the Grid App JavaScript template, shown below:

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Blogging from my Surface RT

Just a quick post to see how well Word 2013 RT (included with the Surface RT I picked up at the Microsoft Store in Tyson’s Corner, VA last week) works as a blogging client. So far, the only major app that I use regularly that I really miss on my Surface is Windows Live Writer, which is simply an excellent tool for creating and managing blog posts.

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Microsoft DevRadio: Using Blend to Help Design Your Windows 8 Apps (Part 3)

Abstract:
In the final part of our Using Blend for Windows 8 apps series, Andrew Duthie and Kirupa Chinnathambi take a look at the Interactive Mode for Blend and demo for us how to style a template using CSS, data binding and more.

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Microsoft DevRadio: Using Blend to Help Design Your Windows 8 Apps (Part 2)

Abstract:
In Part 2 of our Using Blend for Windows 8 apps series, Andrew Duthie and Kirupa Chinnathambi take a deep dive into how you can use Blend to easily design your Windows 8 apps for various devices. In this episode they’ll show you how to use the device panel and how to react to views and view states.

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Windows Store apps and 3rd-party JavaScript Libraries

If you’ve attended one of my talks on building Windows Store apps with HTML5 and JavaScript, you’ve heard me say that although the default for our app templates is to use the WinJS library for providing rich databinding, controls, and a great look and feel that makes your app fit into the Windows store ecosystem, we also support the use of 3rd party JavaScript libraries as well, with a few caveats.

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W8WIL #6: Leverage the Maps app for location-based features

I’m a big fan of reuse wherever possible, so in this 6th installment of my Windows 8: What I’ve Learned series, I’m going to share a tip on how you can essentially get some great features for your app, with very little effort, by leveraging an app that ships with every copy of Windows 8.

The Maps app

Windows 8 machines will ship with several handy apps included, such as the Mail app, the People app and a few others. One of the more useful apps is the Maps app. It can, with the user’s permission, use location features built into the machine (GPS, or network-based location services) to find your current location, integrated search for finding a desired address or point of interest, and built in support for directions, traffic, etc. You can see a screenshot of the maps app below:

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Microsoft DevRadio: Using Blend to Help Design Your Windows 8 Apps (Part 1)

Abstract:

Andrew Duthie and Program Manager Kirupa Chinnathambi from the Microsoft Expression Blend team join us for part one of this series as we take an inside look at how Blend can help developers design their Windows 8 apps. Tune in as they build a basic “hello world” application, add HTML assets and style it using CSS.

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