Use Expression Design to create a Windows 8 ‘Ratings’ control

If you are not aware of Expression Design, you are missing a powerful tool in your toolbox. Expression Design allows designers and developers to create original vector assets or edit existing, including those created in other tools (like those from Adobe).

An update to Expression Design 4 was recently released. You can download the June 2012 preview here. (learn more) As the capabilities of Design continue to bloom, in this article we’ll use the basic functions to create a vector-based ratings solution that anyone can add to their Windows application.

Windows 8 Notifications: Scheduled Notifications

Hopefully, you’ve had a chance to review my previous post on Local Notifications as it sets the foundation nicely for taking the next step to scheduling notifications to occur at some point in the future – when the application itself may or may not be actually running.

Time-specific “local” notifications

Taking the step from a local notification to a scheduled one is pretty simple; a scheduled notification is more or less a local notification with a specific delivery time attached to it. Given that there is no guarantee that the application will be running when that time arrives, a scheduled notification can actually fire when the application itself isn’t running.

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Analytics & Insights for Windows 8 Developers

MarkedUp helps WinRT developers get analytics and actionable insights on how consumers are using their apps.

MarkedUp will be offering a free public beta soon.  
     

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Hello Netflix? This Windows 8, WinJS and HTML5. Can we talk?

Today's Metro (err... um... Windows 8 App) Wednesday project is another kind of common Hello World kind of example application, one that shows that given a public API developers can provide an experience beyond what the API provider might have ever imagined.

Oh and it shows other stuff too, like calling an OData service, use HTML5/WinJS, data binding, sharing and more. Now it's up to you to take this and add your imagination, inspiration and... oh, well, you get it..

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