Develop Reference

C# Accessing Windows 10 Printer Icons

Is it possible to grab "custom" printer icons like the ones on the multi-printers (the 3 visible in the picture) in Windows 10? I've had a look in shell32.dll and DDORes.dll but can't see the multifunction printer icons in there. Where are they stored? If it is possible to grab them from somewhere, is it possible to read which icon the printer should be using with WMI or something else?

The image locations can be found in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceMetadataCache\dmrccache\en-US when using Windows 10. I had found info regarding the Windows 7 location which is slightly different to how it is now.

Windows Phone 8.1 Different text size for different screen dimension

I am developing a windows runtime app for windows phone, i need to scale the text based on the screen dimension.
for handle the image scaling i have used the 3 folder(scale-100, scale-140 and scale-240)
In the app I have different style for different kind of text(title, subtitle...)
is there any way to apply different style based on the screen size?

Following solution is for Windows (Phone) RT, not for WP Silverlight.
The resource system of Windows RT is much more powerful than a lot of people know. You're not only able to use scaling for images, the same works for resource (.resw) files, even a combination of language/scaling is possible. Simply use the correct naming conventions: e.g. Resources.scale-140.resw.
And then you're able to put about every single attached/dependency property in your resource file, leveraging the resource system based on x:Uid.
<Grid x:Uid="MainGrid">
<TextBlock x:Uid="MyTextBlock" />
</Grid>
You can run a few of the different emulator sizes to test if everything works as desired.

How can I design responsive UI in universal windows app

I have just started to develop in universal app. I have developed app in Windows 8 store apps and also developing Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 8.1 (SilverLight) Apps. Question is related to universal app in Windows and Single UI which is created in App. Share folder.
1 For web there is word like responsive UI. to create there is media query to write css.
I know css is same as we can create resource with for xaml . I can get resolution form c# and I can create different UI for different resolution and I can visible collapsed according to resolution but is there any single way which automatically adjust according to design.? ( this question is related to data binding controls specially...)

There are several techniques to adjust the page's design to the size, shape, and resolution of the window. These are usually used together.
The first is to use dynamic layout controls instead of hard-coding positions. For example, use a Grid control with * columns to split the screen by percentages, or a StackPanel to stack controls so they as they fit. GridViews can scale to fill the screen (and beyond). This will let the app flow to use the available space.
MSDN discusses this technique in Quickstart: Defining layouts
For larger scale changes where the app should make bigger changes to adjust to larger changes such as portrait vs. landscape vs. snapped modes you can use Visual States. Visual States allow the app to set a specific state (e.g. "Landscape") which automatically changes properties of the page's controls. For dynamic layout the visual states will typically hide and show different controls, for example to switch from a horizontally oriented GridView in Landscape mode to a vertically oriented ListView in Portrait mode. By data-binding both controls to the same data the code-behind doesn't need to know any details about which controls are used at any specific time.
MSDN discusses this technique in Quickstart: Designing apps for different window sizes
Blend has a very good Visual States editor that you can use to define and set up different visual states visually.
The same techniques and code apply to Windows Store apps and for Windows Phone Store apps, but the exact layouts are likely to be different to cater to the different device sizes. Windows Store apps run on a wide range of display sizes and users can resize Windows Store apps freely, so Windows Store apps need to support much more flexible layouts than Windows Phone Store apps. Windows Phone Store apps need to take display resolution into account, but run on fairly consistent aspect ratios which change only for portrait or landscape.
For very simple apps you may be able get away with sharing a single Xaml page in the Shared project of a Universal app, but in most cases you'll be better off with separate page designs for Windows Store and Windows Phone apps. In addition to the screen size differences, there are a few control differences that will require separate Xaml. Xaml doesn't support conditional compilation, so a Shared Xaml file would need to be exactly the same in both.

For Windows Store you can use 'visual states'. You can set rules that determine which visual state is to be used, e.g. when the width is 320 switch to snap mode and modify the layout to suit.
Be careful when looking up information on this because the paradigm changed a lot between Windows 8 and 8.1.
Jerry Nixon has a great tutorial on visual states:
http://blog.jerrynixon.com/2013/11/windows-81-how-to-use-visual-states-in.html
This post from my blog covers a simple scenario using code behind only (VB, but should be easy to change to C#) - not advisable when you have a complex layout:
http://grogansoft.com/blog/?p=116
And there is a sample somewhere amongst these on the Windows Dev Center:
https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/Windows-8-Modern-Style-App-Samples/view/SamplePack#content
For the phone version(s) you should probably not bother with visual states as a phone app always has the full screen, and it's a better user experience to lock the display to either portrait or landscape.
Your phone/Store apps can share controls, but they have their own pages. I usually create full sized and smaller versions of any data-bound controls and use the smaller size on the phone and when the Store version is in a small state (e.g. 1/2 the screen).

How do I utilize the functionality of a multi-monitor setup without physical hardware?

I've spent the past few days researching whether its possible to use the Windows API (Preferably Windows 8) to develop an application that can utilize the features in a multiple physical monitor configuration, from a single physical monitor. As far as I can tell you simply cannot do it, or its just not documented at all. Below I will present my problem and the research I've under-taken in the hopes that someone can provide some knowledge I have not yet encountered.
The Problem
In Windows 7+ multi-monitor configurations are able to utilize some cool desktop features such as being able to use a single large desktop that spans multiple monitors, seamless application dragging between them, ability to toggle whether to have the taskbar span or not, etc.
The Virtual Screen (MSDN link).
I would like to gain access to this API and allow my application to use it to allow the user to effectively have multiple virtual desktops from a single physical monitor. Simple as that.
The Solution
Here I will present a number of proposed solutions I have found, and why they will not work (As far as I can tell).
1. Use the Window Station & Desktop API to create entirely new desktops and flip between them.
"A window station is a securable object that is associated with a process, and contains a clipboard, an atom table, and one or more desktop objects.
A desktop is a securable object contained within a window station. A desktop has a logical display surface and contains user interface objects such as windows, menus, and hooks."
MSDN Link.
This is a really clean and simple way to effectively create multiple desktops in windows that allows the user to switch between on a single monitor. However it has the following large caveat:
"Windows doesn't provide a way to move a window from one desktop object to another, and because a separate Explorer process must run on each desktop to provide a taskbar and start menu, most tray applications are only visible on the first desktop." Sysinternals on TechNET.
2. Attempt to create a fake display driver to force Windows to believe it has more than one monitor.
This appears to have been a valid option for a couple of existing similar applications such as ZoneScreen. However in Windows 7 it became difficult to install the unsigned driver and in Windows 8 it appears to be flat out impossible.
3. Fake it by attempting to track applications and force them to hide between user defined monitor groups.
Both commercial and free applications such as DisplayFusion and Finestra Virtual Desktops appear to use a highly convoluted and complex system of tracking launched applications and attempting to hide and unhide them as the user switches between virtual monitors.
This is the most workable solution as it largely meets all the requirements. But its a hack - Some applications don't really work with it and there are many corner cases where it will fail.
What am I missing here? Is any of my research incorrect thus far? Are there areas of the API that I haven't yet plumbed?

develop an application that can utilize the features in a multiple physical monitor configuration, from a single physical monitor
The Windows API ties each desktop to a explorer process and the taskbar,notifications etc are managed on a per-desktop basis. It is possible to create new virtual desktops using this API by creating a new desktop object. However if you are trying to create something that is the equivalent of workspaces in linux distros, then you are out of luck. The desktop object manages the applications launched under a process tree and moving applications between these desktop objects etc is not possible due to the way windows explorer handles work.
The Solution
Here I will present a number of proposed solutions I have found, and why they will not work (As far as I can tell).
The only way to achieve something close to workspaces is to fake it -
each workspace and its process have to be show in the taskbar/notification area by slots. But this is very tough to achieve and games, fullscreen apps etc are bound to break. I am not aware of how this will work out in Win8 either. So yes - workspaces in Windows are going to suck from the get-go.

Get Window 8 Start Screen tiles

I would like to get a listing of all the tiles on the Win8 Start screen. I do not need them to live update just get the appropriate tiles/icons.
What is the way to get all the tiles found on the Windows 8 Start Screen?
Clarification:
What I am looking for is images of the tiles pinned to the start screen (not just my application's). I would like to provide those images to the user in a different way.
In Windows 7 I would just gather everything from the start menu folder and then gather their icons.
I recognize that I cannot create a Windows Store app to do this. I was planning on this being a desktop app.

The Windows Store Apps (aka Metro apps) are installed in "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps"
Your app idea is impossible as WinRT app because WinRT app has sandbox nature, so you can't access that path. If you want to develop desktop app then it's possible.
In that folder, you will find separate folder for each app. Look for "Assets" or "images" folder. It contains all the logo (Wide, Store, Small, SplashScreen, etc) of particular app. The folder name may differ for any app, "Assets" & "images" is default folders.
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