Is there any SDK or frameworks to realise 'Pull To Refresh' feature in Windows Store App?
You need to customize on your own. There's no 3rd party UI control till now available for WinRT. This might help you.
How to detect when a user pulls down a ListView
Related
I have two simple questions since I'm very new to Windows Phone programming:
1:
How do I cange the root frame, or show a different Page on startup, in a Windows Phone 8.1 Silverlight application? I have a LoginPage and then I want to check if the user is logged in show MainPage as root frame and if the user is not logged in show the LoginPage.
2:
Windows Phone Silverlight applications seems so different to me compared to the Windows Phone WinRT applications, or maybe I'm just not experienced enough. For example I can't put a placeholder/hint text in a textBox in Silverlight but it's super easy in WinRT, why is it like that? Isn't that something very basic that many IDE's implements? Or have I missed something mayor when I'm developing a Silverlight application for Windows Phone?
I know that Windows Phone WinRT is used to create universal apps and Silverlight is used to create only mobile apps for Windows Phone, but why is developing a mobile app in Silverlight so much different (at least to me) compared to build a Windows Phone app i WinRT?
For your first question, use the UriMapper.
The basic principle is that you check if the user is logged in or not and based on that, navigate to the correct view.
The code is not all that complicated, there is a very good tutorial up on Shawn Kendrot his blog here...
For question 2, how to add some sort of hint/watermark can be done in several different ways.
But a very simple version is presented on MSDN here... it uses events to set and clear the watermark.
Point 1
You have to go to Package.appxmanifest and under the tab called Application the second field contains the startup page name. Currently it should be MainPage.xaml, just change it to LoginPage.xaml.
Point 2
I don't quite understand your question. Silverlight and Windows Runtime are two different platforms, they have in fact many different libraries. The goal of Windows Runtime is to run the same application on several different devices, so different hardware requirements and different resolutions. It was a need to organize the environment differently and of course Microsoft added some minor changes such as the hint text (e.g.).
What is so different to you? I did the porting of an app from SL to WinRT but it's not difficult nor tricky at all.
When I create new Windows Phone project I have an option to create a "Windows Phone" or "Windows Phone Silverlight" app. I know that they have different runtimes and different APIs.
I was under the impression that Microsoft wants to unify Windows and Windows Phone platforms so why is there even a Silverlight version? What benefits does it bring?
Also, if I want to create an app just for Windows Phone and never have plans to bring it to Windows, what should I choose, Silverlight or Windows Phone?
I'd suggest you go with "Windows Phone" (non-Silverlight). It's the new API, which works for both Windows and Windows Phone. At some point you may want to port the app or create a new one for Windows and you'll already know the API (and porting will be way easier). Also, the new API will most likely get more updates and features added, and at some point you may even be forced to update to it (either because the old one is no longer supported, or because it does not have some features that you need).
As it was said in the other answers - the Silverlight option is there only for backward compatibility and is likely to be phased out in time. That is - it's good if you already know the API and have many libraries (yours or others) for WP Silverlight, but if you're just starting - you'd better go for the new technology.
Edit
There is one other thing to consider before choosing between the two types of apps. Some features are only available in a Silverlight app, and others (smaller amount) - only in a Xaml app. Here's an article with some info on the differences: Migrating your Windows Phone 8 app to a Windows Runtime XAML app
Windows RT Xaml is quite new and People have to generate some knowledge first.
Silverlight for phone has been around for years and there's a load of tools available: Phone Toolkit, diverse Controls, etc.
Just killing it off would have hurt many developers who built up intellectual property over a long time forcing them to start over.
When starting a project with Silverlight you will have more things around that help you get stuff done.
When starting with WinRT Xaml, you will have better performance, but will have to figure a lot out by yourself.
So the Silverlight option is there to not throw of Silverlight developers.
I recently started a new project on WinRT Xaml and my experience was that I had to recreate a lot of common tools like Caches, etc. But also a lot of things that were in Toolkits previously are now part of the platform itself. Also, when moving over to Windows 8, you get to share a lot of code which is nice.
Unifying the environment(s) would be ideal. In my opinion, it hasn't been very successful. At one point in time, you could only develop under Silverlight, so what you are seeing is just a newer version of the same thing to keep backwards compatibility as well as to keep Silverlight's developers happy. In the future, it will probably be phased out. Plus if you want to support older Phones, Silverlight is basically your only choice (you'll be surprise, how many WP users haven't updated their 8.0 to 8.1)
There really isn't any other real benefit of Silverlight other than maybe the Windows Phone Toolkit which has been tremendously useful (you can see how many SO's answers rely on this simple addon). Once the universal runtime gets fleshed out to the point where the documentation reflects what's actually available -- then I think it would be the default project for developing in Windows going forward.
If you're just starting, I would use Silverlight the knowledge based is much greater. After you get use to the WP environment then switch to runtime.
I wonder how to create Zune-like apps (I mean Metro style). But I don't want them to be Windows Store apps (I have already installed Windows 8 platform with VS2012). Could you tell me if I should download some style pack or something like that? Maybe there are some libraries implementing Metro? If yes, plese make me know which one is the best.
Thanks in advance.
There is a Theme for WPF called Cosmopolitan that emulates the Metro style. Now it just gives you the flattened look on the controls for free. You're on your own with Layout, Animations, and Navigation.
Consider WPF UI framweork for building apps like zune
http://mahapps.com/MahApps.Metro/
Due to naming issues (read: MS didn't want to get sued and apparently couldn't properly trademark the word Metro, go figure) there is no such thing as Metro anymore.
That style was renamed to be "Windows Store". So I'm not 100% certain of what it is you are asking for.
Also, contrary to the name and potentially misleading marketing speak on their site, a Windows Store App does not have to be published and sold through the Windows Store.
You might read this for some "clarification":
http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-finally-comes-cleaner-on-post-metro-naming-plans-7000004151/
I am developing a GPS smart device application with VS 2008 and .NET compact framework 3.5 on windows 6.1 mobile, I wanna to show the current location to the user on windows mobile Form using an interactive google Map control. But I searched a lot for such a control through many sites uselessly can anyone tell me how to find this control or how to do it please ?
GMaps.NET is the best in my opinion:
http://greatmaps.codeplex.com/
Here is a project in codeplex you may try. Download the source code there is no binary for download.
I'm also developing in the same environment and looking at adding navigation to our app. In our case the device will be in a vehicle so we want "Tom Tom" style nav rather than "top down" Google Maps.
We are using Resco controls which are excellent. They have recently released a navigation control that you can just drag on to a form. I'm hoping to evaluate this soon. This stuff isn't cheap but you might want to check out the demo if your project has the budget. Resco are an excellent company to deal with (no affiliation - just that they have made my app look cool and saved me a LOT of work).
http://www.resco.net/developer/mapnavigation/overview.aspx
Cheers
Mark
As there are those gadgets available for the Windows Vista Sidebar and for Windows 7, I'd really like to know if you can integrate those into your .NET app. I want a similar feature and possibly use already existing gadgets into my app.
Can it be done?
This is likely possible but is not going to be very easy. You're application will need to do everything that the OS would normally do to host them, including parsing the gadget manifests, setting up a web container for each to run in, calling each gadget's event handlers correctly, etc.
Basically, everything that a gadget is supposed to do to integrate with the OS, you'll need to support. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa965850%28v=VS.85%29.aspx
This is not a project for the faint of heart but would be pretty cool if you can get it to work.
Have fun!
BTW, there is a W3C draft standard for widgets but it's not really practical yet. See http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/1