Actipro WinRT XAML Controls for Windows 8 Released

Yesterday we officially released our first WinRT XAML user interface controls!  These controls are designed to be used in any .NET-based Windows 8 app and are fully compatible with both the Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 RTM versions.

This first 2012.2 version includes all of the Micro Charts functionality found in the WPF and Silverlight versions, along with several new micro chart controls that we'll get into soon in upcoming blog posts.

These controls are full production-quality and are not a beta product.  We are excited to be one of the very first control vendors to release Windows 8 XAML UI controls for C# and VB developers.

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5 Unforgivable Windows 8 RTM Problems

I work with a couple of committees at Microsoft for developing the future “story” of some of their key technologies. So I’ve been able to participate in some fun closed focus groups for things like ASP.NET, WCF, Windows and Visual Studio 2012. The gist of it is that the guts of Windows 8 are superb. It is extremely optimized, and the OS has a much lower memory footprint. This was the core of their focus when developing Windows 8, because they need it to run on tablets. That means battery life is paramount. In fact, Windows 8 will run better than Windows 7 on the exact same computer. That’s a first for MS, and it’s pretty incredible.

Sadly, that’s where the incredible ends. I’ve been using the final RTM bits for a bit now, and there are a few problems really need to be addressed SOON. Some you’ve heard, some you probably haven’t. Here’s my current gripe list:

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LINQ to Twitter

LINQ to Twitter is an open source 3rd party LINQ Provider for the Twitter micro-blogging service. It uses standard LINQ syntax for queries and includes method calls for changes via the Twitter API.

Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Client Profile, and Windows 8.

100% Twitter API coverage.

LINQ to Twitter Samples contains example code for using LINQ to Twitter with various .NET technologies. Downloadable source code also has C# samples in the LinqToTwitterDemo project and VB samples in the LinqToTwitterDemoVB project.

Downalod from here 

Getting started with SQLite in Windows Store / WinRT apps

In this blog post I will expand the blog post by Tim Heuer  to include information on how to include and access a pre-populated SQLite database file, maybe even a file created by migrating from a SQL Server Compact database file.

First, download the "SQLite for Windows Runtime" Extension via Tools/Extensions and Updates/Online. Restart Visual Studio.

Then add references to the SQLite and C++ extensions as described by Tim Heuer. Remember to change the Build Configuration to either x64 or x86 in Configuration Manager.

Now add the sqlite-net nuget package to the project, from the References node, select "Manage NuGet Packages" and search online for "sqlite-net"

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