Tips and Tricks for C# Windows 8 developer: Try to catch the famous ‘It works for me’ bug

As an experienced developer, you do not have bug. Never. At least on your computer. And when sometimes (so rarely that you can barely remember) a bug appears, it is never on your computer.

And in this case, it is a true hell to find at least where in your application the bug is (because as you never have bugs, you do not need to integrate an error log system).

The first solution can be to decline the responsibility with a “It works for me, you should have a problem with your drivers”.

But you can also try to locate it J

This article presents you some tips to find some information about a bug on a non-developer computer.

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Building your own Windows Runtime components to deliver great Metro style appsFor Windows 8, we completely reimagined the platform, allowing you to choose the programming language and technologies you already know to build apps tailored to the device and form factor. With the Windows Runtime, you can even easily use multiple languages within a single app. You can build a great Metro style app with HTML and JavaScript that can interact with the Xbox 360 controller through building your own Windows Runtime component in C++. You can build reusable XAML controls exposed via Windows Runtime components that are instantly consumable by Metro style apps written in both C++ and C#. Essentially, we have let you build apps on the Windows 8 platform using the languages of your choice with no comprises. In this blog post, we talk about what you need to know to build your own Windows Runtime components.

For Windows 8, we completely reimagined the platform, allowing you to choose the programming language and technologies you already know to build apps tailored to the device and form factor. With the Windows Runtime, you can even easily use multiple languages within a single app. You can build a great Metro style app with HTML and JavaScript that can interact with the Xbox 360 controller through building your own Windows Runtime component in C++. You can build reusable XAML controls exposed via Windows Runtime components that are instantly consumable by Metro style apps written in both C++ and C#. Essentially, we have let you build apps on the Windows 8 platform using the languages of your choice with no comprises.

In this blog post, we talk about what you need to know to build your own Windows Runtime components.

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Windows 8 and HTML Part 3: Using the Simulator

Windows 8 and HTML Part 1: Simple Example

Windows 8 and HTML Part 2: 3rd Party Frameworks



When debugging a Windows 8 Metro application, you are not limited to running and debugging the app on your local machine.  If you look closely, you will see that the toolbar button that says “Local Machine” by default (the button with the green arrow) can also act as a drop down.  This drop down allows you to select different targets to deploy and debug your application.  Perhaps in a future blog post I will over the “Remote Machine” option, but for now, let’s click the drop down and set it to “Simulator”.

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Windows 8 Notifications: Programmatic Concepts

In my previous blog post, I provided a high level overview of notifications in Window 8, breaking the functionality down in terms of the user experience (tiles, toast, and badges) and delivery mechanisms (local, scheduled, periodic, and push). This post will look at the common programmatic concepts of the user experience: what you can do with tiles, toast and badges, and how you accomplish that within code. Subsequent blogs posts will focus more deeply on the specific delivery mechanisms.

What is a Notification?

At its very core a notification is simply a bit of information you wish to convey to the user, and it’s the Windows 8 runtime that provides a framework for both how and when the notifications appear. Regardless of the user experience, the structure of a notification is provided via an XML template. There are predefined templates for tile, toast and badge notifications, and every notification must comply with one of these templates.

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Windows 8 Notifications: Overview

Hopefully you’ve had a chance to experience Windows 8 – Windows reimagined – by downloading the Windows 8 Release Preview, but even if you haven’t gotten your hands on it yet, it’s clear that more than any other release, Windows 8 enables an intensely personal experience.

Clearly Windows 8 design with its touch-first philosophy are front and center in creating that personal experience, but just as important is how your application proactively interacts with your users, keeping them informed of changes in application state like, say, the arrival of a new social media update. As you build applications for the Windows Store, consider ways your application can anticipate and thereby delight your users by using key paradigms such as tiles and notifications.

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Developing Simple Metro Style Applications using Commanding

A Metro style app is a new type of application that runs on Windows 8. An important feature of these applications is they can be developed in a variety of languages using HTML5, CSS, JavaScript or using .NET platform languages like C#, C++ , VB.NET, XAML or using DirectX.
Since XAML support is available for Metro style applications, developers who are familiar with XAML features like Commanding, DataBinding can easily utilize them in Metro applications. In this article, we will see how commanding features can be used in a metro style app.

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Windows 8, XNA and MonoGame - Part 2, Getting Started

In part 1 of this series I gave you an overview of MonoGame, an open source cross platform implementation of the XNA namespace and class model and how you could use that to port you existing XNA code to Windows 8. In this article, I will show you how to get your development environment setup to support your porting effort.

         

Note: special thanks for Dean Ellis (dellis1972 ) who posted a video on YouTube outlining this process. I highly recommend that you view Dean’s video before you follow the steps below

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Windows 8, XNA and MonoGame – Part 1, Overview

Games are likely some of the most popular apps on Windows 8 and you are in a great position to take advantage of this huge opportunity.  How huge?  The Windows Store Blog sums it up well:          With more than 630 million Windows 7 licenses sold to date, across 200+ countries and regions around the world, Windows has an unrivaled global reach. Combined with the flexibility of monetization options that the Store provides, Windows 8 represents the single biggest developer opportunity for any platform.

      

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Casual game developers have been using XNA since 2004 to easily create games for Windows, XBox and most recently Windows Phone. XNA is a .NET framework for game development providing a content pipeline and game asset load functionality, animation, math, sound and user input tracking via gamepad, mouse, keyboard and touch with game logic organized in a straightforward game loop architecture. Game development is not trivial and XNA was a level up for a great number of students and developers who wanted to learn how to create games. XNA along with Visual Studio made it as easy as File –> New –> XNA Game Studio Project and you were off and gunning.