Toetapz's Blog

Handling legal issues when writing mobile apps

toetapz — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:09:00 +0000

In fla-wimo-dev group we had great discussion going on in regards to how to handle legal issues when writing your mobile apps. Well look no further as Jay Kimble wrote great blog summarizing the group discussion in his blog.

Windows Phone Workshop on : Make Millions Developing for Windows Phone

toetapz — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:58:09 +0000

I will be presenting via LiveStream.com on making money developing Windows Phone application so come and join to hear. http://thesociablegeek.com/event-registration/?ee=5

Windows Phone SDK 7.1 READY!

toetapz — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 01:45:49 +0000

- WPSDK 7.1 on the Download Center: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27570

- Direct links

o English (en-US): Web installer; ISO
o French (fr-FR): Web installer; ISO
o German (de-DE): Web installer; ISO
o Italian (it-IT): Web installer; ISO
o Japanese (ja-JP): Web installer; ISO
o Korean (ko-KR): Web installer; ISO
o Russian (ru-RU): Web installer; ISO
o Spanish (es-ES): Web installer; ISO
o Traditional Chinese (zh-TW): Web installer; ISO

Windows Phone 7 Development Day at Pittsburgh

toetapz — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 19:55:45 +0000

I will be presenting on Windows Phone at Pittsburgh “Windows Phone 7 Development Day Develop for Windows Phone 7 for Fun and Profit”. I will covering how to market Windows Phone applications to Microsoft Windows Phone Marketplace and MAKE MONEY. I will give out some of the secrets that my company uses at ToeTapz.

I will be providing my session material here so please check again.

The NeutralResourceLanguage attribute is missing on the entry assembly. Error Message!

toetapz — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 18:45:26 +0000

So we get some interesting error message when submitting a xap to Windows Phone marketplace as shown in Figure 1.1 below with the error message of “The [NeutralResourceLanguage] attribute is missing on the entry assembly.”

Figure 1.1 Missing NeutralResourceLanguage attribute error message

To avoid this problem follow the steps below or see Figure 1.2 below.

1) Right click on the main Windows Phone project and choose property

2) Click on Application tab and then click Assembly Information… button

3) Choose Neutral Language from the drop down

Figure 1.2 To avoid NeutralResourceLanguage error

Beginning Windows Phone Development Translated to Korean

toetapz — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:36:41 +0000

This was really pleasant surprise that the book got translated into Korean. I look forward to receiving feedbacks from Korean Windows Phone developers about the book.

Atlanta Code Camp

toetapz — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 12:28:50 +0000

I will be presenting following topics on June 25, 2011 at http://www.atlantacodecamp.org.

Session Title

Developing A Windows Phone Application Using Windows Azure

Abstract

You are building a Windows Phone application but what would happen when millions of consumers start to use your application? To plan ahead for the huge number of users your application might attract, a more robust architecture must be considered. Windows Azure is exciting platform that empowers you as the developer to off-load the infrastructure needs to the cloud and helps you focus on building an application. In this session, you will learn to build Windows Phone Notepad application that will utilize the WCF RESTful service layer with SQL back-end built in Windows Azure cloud.

Session Materials

http://www.toetapz.com/downloads/WP-AzureNotepad.zip

Session Title

Creating WCF RESTful Service in Windows Azure

Abstract

In this session, you will learn to implement RESTful APIs using WCF in Windows Azure. You will look at all aspects of WCF RESTful implementation in order to be interoperable with the multiple clients. The session will cover implementation and deployment details, best practices, handling security, and versioning. You will learn to work with Windows Azure from development to production deployment.

Session Materials

http://www.toetapz.com/downloads/Azure-RestfulWebService.zip

Session Title

Animations in Windows Phone

Tap Dancing Hamster and Smoke from Volcano

Abstract

What makes a smartphone application compelling to users? A compelling design, of course, one that not only delivers the benefits that users want, but also keeps them engaged, even entertained, as they navigate its features. Adding animations is a powerful way to not only to engage the users but also make your application fun to use.

In this session, you will learn first how to create a time based animation using Microsoft Expression Blend 4 and then invoke them with C# code you write with Visual Studio 2010. You will do this by animating the character of Morton the hamster. And then you will be introduced to more advanced topic by learning to create a frame based animation that displays smoke rising from an active volcano.

Session Materials

http://www.toetapz.com/downloads/WP-Animation.zip

Beginning Windows Phone 7 Development 2nd Edition Apress

toetapz — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 14:45:00 +0000

Finally, got done writing 2nd edition http://www.apress.com/9781430235965. Made bunch of changes and basically spend time refining the book.

Also you can find the book source code now at http://wp7apress.codeplex.com/

Dynamically Manipulating Storyboard

toetapz — Wed, 18 May 2011 15:26:00 +0000

One of thing I came across was dynamically manipulating storyboard that was created by the designer. This demo I created basically moves robot seen in Figure 1 to any position you specify in the textbox.

Figure 1. Moving robot by dynamically modifying the storyboard

In following section, let’s start by creating the storyboard.

Creating Storyboard

First you would need to create storyboard where the robot will be moving from one location to other location as shown in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2. Create storyboard of moving robot

Next section you will learn to modify xaml so so you can dynamically change x and y coordinates in the code based on the input x and y textbox.

Modifying XAML

First let’s open Main.xaml that contains the robot storyboard. You will be able to see the storyboard that you just created named MoveRobot in phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources section as show in below code.

<phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources>

DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames>

DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames>

Storyboard>

phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources>

When you look at the xaml you will notice the key frame CompositionTransform.TranslateX and TranslateY which is responsible for specifying the coodinates where the robot will move to. Name CompositionTransform.TranslateX and TranslateY node using x:Name which will now allow you to reference them in the code and specify the value dynamically.

Modifying the Storyboard Dynamically

Now you created reference to posX and posY in XAML you will be able to reference them and change the value as shown in below code during the button click event.

private void btnMove_Click(object sender, System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs e)

{

posX.Value = Double.Parse(txtX.Text, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

posY.Value = Double.Parse(txtY.Text, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

MoveRobot.Begin();

}

Download Code

Conclusion

This is useful technique because you could have nice animation created by the designer and allow the developers to manipulate any part of the animation. For example in our SteakCooker (http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=4e26e56f-14ed-df11-9264-00237de2db9e) uses this blog technique to manipulate the time because the time dynamically has to change depending on the size of steaks and how the user wants the steak cooked.

Quick video of my Windows Phone 7 animation session from Orlando Code Camp 20111

toetapz — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 20:20:41 +0000

MyPruf.com has done great job of video taping various sessions including my Windows Phone 7 sessions: http://blog.mypruf.com/article/magical-time-in-orlando.