Archive for the ‘Development’ Category

Windows 7 will not support legacy apps but porting shouldn’t be too hard

March 6th, 2010 Comments Off

Steve Ballmer introducing Windows Phone 7 series Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer introduces the new Windows phone at a February conference in Barcelona. Credit: Alberto Estevez / EPA.Emphasizing its departure from its previous generation of mobile devices, Microsoft Corp. on Thursday said its new Windows Phone 7 Series devices won’t run programs from older versions of Windows-based phones.
"For us, the cost of going from good to great is a clean break from the past," Charlie Kindel, a Microsoft executive who works on the mobile platform, wrote in a blog post. 

That break means thousands of applications designed for older Microsoft phones will not work on the new ones, and Microsoft will have to start from the beginning in the increasingly intense race for dominance in mobile applications.

Apple Inc.’s iPhone, iPod Touch and, soon, the iPad tablet computer all run applications from the company’s online App Store, which is home to nearly 150,000 programs designed by developers around the world.  Google Inc.’s phones run apps from the Android Market, which holds closer to 20,000 of the small programs.

For its new series of phones – to be released in the fall – Microsoft has highlighted its distinct approach to design, perhaps to set it apart from its popular competitors.

“Different often means change,” Kindel wrote.

He pointed out that Microsoft would still work with developers whose software worked with the older mobile operating systems, such as Windows Mobile 6.5.

However when you look at most of the apps for Windows Mobile there are written using the .NET framework which is used in Silverlight and WPF. All app developers will have to do is create a new Windows PHONE 7 series app add some controls in and then just copy and paste code across for the new controls.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted in Development, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone Tags: , , , ,

A new app for Windows Phone, sponsored by Tech Ticker

December 26th, 2009 Comments Off

Tip n' Split

Designed for Windows Phone Take the guesswork out of calculating tips and bills with Tip n’ Split a new dynamic app from Handy. Simply add up the total cost of your items using the built-in calculator and then press the confirm button. Then just select the tip percentage, the number of people, hit the calculate button and Tip n’ Split will calculate the amount that each person has to pay.

Tip n Split - Screenshot Tip n' Split screenshot

image Tip n’ Split is currently in the app approval process and we hope it will be approved very soon. When it is you will be able to download it free of charge from the Windows Phone Marketplace. This is the first mobile app that Tech Ticker has sponsored and all of the latest app news will be posted here. If you are interested in future apps visit www.thatwashandy.com or www.thatwashandy.co.uk.

Download link will become active as soon as the app has been approved by Windows Phone Marketplace

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted in Development, Featured, Windows Mobile Tags: , , , ,

Microsoft Showcases Developer Opportunities for Windows and the Web

November 22nd, 2009 Comments Off

During the second day of Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference 2009, Microsoft outlined new opportunities and resources for developers to create applications that take advantage of the power of Windows and the reach of the Web. Microsoft also invited developers to test new beta versions of Microsoft Silverlight 4, Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division, showcased how developers can take advantage of the unique software and hardware innovations fuelled by Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 to build compelling computing experiences for customers.

IE9“The tremendous support behind Windows 7 equates to tangible opportunity for developers on the Windows platform,” Sinofsky said. “We’re looking forward to the new ways that they will bring Windows and the Web to life for all of our customers.”

Looking ahead, Sinofsky also shared an early look at some of the work under way on Internet Explorer 9, highlighting advancements in performance and interoperable standards, as well as advancements such as using DirectX to bring the full power of the PC to the Web experience.

Developing Rich User Experiences

Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Platform, showed how Silverlight provides rich cross-platform experiences that power three screens. He announced the public beta of Silverlight 4, only four months after delivering Silverlight 3, continuing Microsoft’s rapid pace of innovation to help companies design and develop experiences on the Web for both consumers and enterprises. The beta can be downloaded at http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta. Guthrie noted that the newest version of Silverlight includes features such as these:

•Extended out-of-browser capabilities to enable deeper desktop experiences without additional code or runtimes

•Powerful enhancements for enterprise application developers, including full support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, providing access to Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint Server, and improved printing, networking, reporting and charting capabilities

•Richer Web experiences, including new webcam and microphone capabilities, native multicast support for wide-scale media content delivery, and more than 60 customizable controls to build compelling, interactive applications

Silverlight is currently installed on more than 45 percent of Internet-connected devices worldwide and is powering high-profile customers such as NBC’s online broadcast of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, Wimbledon and “NFL Sunday Night Football Extra,” as well as Continental Airlines Inc., the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, and eBay Inc. Guthrie also announced new customers such as SnapFlow and Bloomberg L.P. that are making significant investments in Silverlight for their businesses.

“Silverlight 4 beta marks another significant step forward as Microsoft continues to rapidly innovate and enable developers to deliver rich applications across three screens,” Guthrie said. “Silverlight 4 provides developers with a full suite of capabilities to rapidly build high-quality, highly secure and engaging applications, on the Web or beyond the browser, affirming Silverlight’s position as a great choice for building business applications.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

Posted in Development, Featured, Microsoft Tags: , , ,

Microsoft to ship Linux tools

November 15th, 2009 Comments Off

Proprietary software giant Microsoft is getting into peddling Linux tools.
The Redmond outfit has just bought the Teamprise-related assets of SourceGear which will mean developers using the Eclipse IDE or operating on multiple operating systems, including Unix, Linux and Mac OS X, to build applications with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server.
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A Microsoft spokesman said functionality from the Teamprise Client Suite will be integrated into the Visual Studio product line beginning with Visual Studio 2010.

Traditionally Microsoft has treated Open Source like a red headed step-child and never invited it to any of its parties.  But lately the mood at Redmond appears to have softened.
Microsoft’s S. Somasegar, senior vice president of the Developer Division said that Microsoft knew its customers face daily challenges with management, collaboration and development in heterogeneous environments.
He said that the IT industry, including Microsoft needed to take steps to make interoperability possible.  Releasing Linux based tools is a long way from making Windows 7 Open Source, but it is a step in the right direction.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted in Development, Featured, LINUX, Microsoft

A brief guide to Windows Mobile Widgets

October 21st, 2009 Comments

Required Tools

1) The Windows Mobile 6.5 emulator images

2) The web development environment of choice

3) WMDC or Windows Mobile Device Center (on Vista or Windows 7) or ActiveSync 4.5

With that you should be ready to go to get started, the first step is to start the emulator and cradle the device. The emulators can be started from the start menu under the “Windows Mobile 6 SDK -> Stand Alone Emulator Images -> <Language>”. The device emulator manager can be started using explorer to navigate to the following folder “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Device Emulator\1.0” and selecting dvcemumanager.exe.

Once they are both started, open WMDC or ActiveSync and select connection options and, on the “Connect one of the following” combo box select “DMA” and click “OK”.

Now, on the “Device Emulator Manager” select “Refresh” and then find the emulator on the list, should be the GUID under others and right click -> cradle to connect it to the PC.

UPDATE: Thanks to Peter Nowaks for pointing this out, The emulator can be listed under the “Windows Mobile 6 Professional SDK” category, depending if you have the Windows Mobile 6 SDK installed or not… Just look for the “play” icon :) .

Once that is done, select “Connect without setting up my device” and you should be ready to go, to test, open internet explorer on the 6.5 emulator and navigate to any site, if all is set up correctly it will navigate to it using our brand new browser.

And now…. the fun part begins!

To write a widget we need to follow three easy steps.

1) Develop your widget code

For this you can use the web development tool of your choice, but as an example we can start with something super simple, as follows (copy it into a widget.htm document)

<html>

<head>

<title>Cool Widget!</title>

</head>

<body>

I’m a cool windows mobile 6.5 widget

</body>

</html>

2) Package your widget

Now we have our extremely functional widget code, now we need to create a manifest file (so the framework knows what to do with it) following the w3C widget standard for packaging and configuration (On 6.5 we support the December 22 2008 draft), but to make things easy, here is a small manifest, copy it into a config.xml file in the same folder as your widget.htm

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ ?>

<widget version=”1.0″

xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets”

id=”">

<name>My first widget</name>

<content src=”widget.htm” type=”text/html” />

<access network=”true” />

<icon src=”icon.png”/>

<description>This is my first widget,

it won’t make a lot of money on the

marketplace but at least is cute!</description>

</widget>

Don’t forget to also add an icon called icon.png on the same folder.

At this point, you should have three files (config.xml, icon.png and widget.htm), now we need to package them, on explorer, select the files, right click and send to a compressed folder (it is important to select the files and not the folder that contains them because we want config.xml to be in the root of the zip container). Now just rename the newly created zip file to “widget.wgt” and you are done with this step.

3) Deploy and run

On “Computer” you should see the cradled device emulator as “PocketPC device”

Use it to navigate to “My Documents” on the device and copy the widget file created in step 2 there. Now, on the emulator, open file explorer using the start menu and, listed there you should see your widget file, click on it.

This should start the installation process, once that is done you will see your very first widget on screen!!!

To continue playing with this widget (make it better, etc) you can find the uncompressed files on the “Program Files\Widgets\User\<WidgetID> folder” on the device.

The widget ID is generated at install time and it is an always increasing integer (therefore, the most recently installed widget will have the greatest number). You can replace, add, remove files here for testing at will; the only thing you need for a your widget to pick the changes up is to exit it and start it again, it will have an entry on the start menu.

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Popularity: 20% [?]

Posted in Development, Featured Tags: ,
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