devcenter|Jul 24, 2012

LIDNUG Webinar Presentation Materials

Many thanks to the participants, organizers, and sponsors of today’s LIDNUG webinar – “Putting the Cloud in Your Pocket Pt1 – Using Windows Azure to Build Cloud-Enabled WP7 Apps.”  I especially appreciate the patience of those who attended as we struggled to do the best we could to resolve the LiveMeeting technical issues that dogged…
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wintellect-blogs|Jul 22, 2012

The Unsung Story of the Windows 8 Desktop

When developers first got their hands on the Windows 8 Developer Preview, I heard some comment that it was Windows 7 with some touch-friendly menus added in Metro. While most now know that is far from the case, there is a heavy focus on the Metro-style features and I think it is easy to miss…
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wintellect-blogs|Jul 3, 2012

Talking about Windows 8

This month has been a busy and productive one for me with Windows 8. In addition to the recorded webinar, The Top 10 Features Windows 8 Metro Developers will Love, I also participated in two interviews about Windows 8. The first interview was with Jesse Liberty. I’ve known him for several years now. We’ve met…
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Blogs|Jun 24, 2012

Boston Azure Bootcamp Presentation Materials

I had a tremendous time this weekend presenting alongside Bill Wilder, Michael Collier, John Zablocki, and Jim O’Neil at the Boston Azure Bootcamp event in Cambridge, MA.  The topic once again covered the concepts of using Windows Azure to enhance mobile Windows Phone application and general mobile development considerations, and went beyond my demos to…
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Blogs|Jun 21, 2012

Testing SmtpClient using Microsoft Fakes

A new feature of Visual Studio 2012 is the Microsoft Fakes functionality (well, not a new feature, per se, just a repackaging of the Moles Isolation Framework published by Microsoft Research). It provides a means to isolate functionality in .NET application for testing, including non-virtual and static methods in sealed types. The last part is…
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wintellect-blogs|Jun 20, 2012

Video: The Top 10, er, 11 Features Developers will Love about Windows 8

I downloaded the Developer Preview for Windows 8 within minutes of it being announced during the major //BUILD conference in September 2011. Since then, I’ve been working with Windows 8 on both a laptop and a slate and have come to love several features. I wrote about the top 10 features I think developers will…
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wintellect-blogs|Jun 18, 2012

Introducing the Microsoft Surface Tablet with Windows 8

Today Steve Ballmer stepped up on stage and stated that while we’ve seen great change with things like cloud computing, Windows is the “heart and soul” of Microsoft. There are over 1 billion PCs including embedded machines and workstations. Windows 8 was designed “for the world we know, in which most computers are mobile.” He…
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wintellect-blogs|Jun 17, 2012

CodeStock 2012 Presentation Content

I would like to thank the attendees of my “Putting the Cloud in Your Pocket – A Guide to Using Windows Azure to Build Cloud-Enabled Windows Phone Apps” talk at the recent Codestock event – especially considering the early hour following the previous night’s fun.  The slide and code content I referred to in my…
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wintellect-blogs|Jun 8, 2012

Compressing Data in Windows 8 Metro Applications

The following post is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of my upcoming book, Designing Windows 8 Metro Applications with C# and XAML. Keep reading to learn how you can receive a free copy of the full chapter. Storing large amounts of data can take up a large amount of disk space. Data compression encodes information…
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xaml|May 29, 2012

Metro XAML Nugget: App Bar AutoMagic

You may have noticed that in many places of the Windows 8 Metro UI, as well as many Metro applications where list content can be selected, that making a selection automatically/magically (“automagically”) brings up one or more app bars.  This is consistent with the “Guidelines and checklist for app bars” published in the Metro Style…
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Blogs|May 19, 2012

How to Debug a Windows 8 Metro Secondary Tile

I’ve been working on Chapter 7 of my upcoming book, Designing Windows 8 Metro Applications with C# and XAML. This chapter focuses on tiles and toast notifications. In the Windows 8 runtime, it is incredibly easy to prompt the user to pin a secondary tile. This is a tile that has a deep link for…
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