News

Here is the new SilverlightShow content for Monday, November 19th, 2012.

• New Windows Phone 8 Article Series at SilverlightShow. Part 1: Introduction to the Platform!
• Reactive Extensions in Windows Phone 8 and the 2001 submission error
• A Windows 8 Feature You Won’t See or Talk About, but Everyone Loves
• Displaying the Saved Pictures in the Windows Phone 8 emulator
• Enabling great Play To experiences from your Windows 8 apps (and websites!)
• Microsoft confirms long life for Windows Phone 7.x
• Andy Beaulieu's Windows 8 App Monetization
• [Windows 8] A LiveTile control to use in your Windows Store applications!
• 31 Days of Windows 8 | Day #17: The Clipboard
• Adapting your WebKit-optimized site for Internet Explorer 10
• #Win8Dev Tutorial: Create Great Experience with LiveTile for your WinRT applications

Or follow our news on Twitter - @silverlightshow!

Today, Peter Kuhn starts a new SilverlightShow article series on Windows Phone 8, in which he will cover most of the changes and new features in detail to prepare you for all the potential projects you plan on taking on in the future. Read Part 1 here:

• Windows Phone 8: Introduction to the Platform

This first article is an introduction to the platform itself and the significant changes that have been performed under the hood compared to version 7.x of Windows Phone.

Peter Kuhn is also the author of the following SilverlightShow ebooks:

• Getting Ready for the Windows Phone 7 Exam 70-599
• XNA for Silverlight Developers
• Creating SilverlightShow Windows Phone Application

Visit SilverlightShow Ebook Shelf »

Read original post by Joost van Schaik at .NET by Example

Those who follow me on twitter may have seen a few tweets pass by over problems I had with the Windows Phone 8 version of my app Map Mania. The submission went OK the first time, but the test team found two bugs – bugs that were also there in previous versions, but apparently they have ramped up the quality bar again. I can only applaud that, even if I got bitten by it myself, because the test report was comprehensive and showed someone actually understood or had read into some issues that may arise when using WMS services – and by doing so, succeeded in crashing my app.

Read original post by Brian Hitney at StructureTooBig Blog

I’m going to talk about one of my favorite Windows 8 features – it’s one that everyone will love, but no one really knows much about.  In fact, it’s one that is so good, you’d think it’s a problem.  (Like, if you hit the power button and your machine _instantly_ slept, you’d think there is a problem, wouldn’t you?)

I’ve got 2 disclaimers.  Obviously I work for MSFT so I’m biased, but the second one is, to Joe’s disgust, I actually have an iPad in house.  The excuse is that I have a large Sonos installation, and the iPad is currently the best and one of the cheapest controllers for it.  Much like buying a PS3 as a cheap blu ray player back in the day, it made the most sense.  But the real reason: I love technology. I love all of it.

Read original post by Laurent Bugnion at GalaSoft

One cool feature of the Windows Phone emulator is that it allows you to select pictures from your app (using the PhotoChooserTask) without having to try your app on a physical device. For example, this code (which I used in some of my recent presentations) will trigger the Photo Chooser UI to be displayed on the emulator too [...]

Read original post by Gabe Frost and Analy Otero at Windows 8 App Developer Blog

The Play To feature allows you to stream music, photos and videos from apps to Xbox and other supported devices on your home network. Imagine being able to easily flick photos and videos from your app to the big screen TV. Or music from your app to your living room speakers. Using the Play To contract, you can easily enable those scenarios for your users from your apps. It’s a great way for you to make your apps more engaging in users’ living rooms.

Read original post at WMPoweruser

We had heard recent recent rumours that Windows Phone 7.8 will be coming to handsets shortly, and that the Windows CE-based OS will have a pretty long life as an OS for low-end handsets.

Now corporate vice president of the Windows Phone Division Terry Myerson has confirmed to Techradar that we will be hearing more about the OS shortly.

"We’re going to have more to say about 7.8 in the coming weeks," he assured TechRadar.

Read original post at Andy Beaulieu's Blog

It's been three weeks since Windows 8 GA, and I've had several fellow developers ask about my luck on the Windows Store. So here is some usage and monetization data for "Physamajig" - an app which I developed in my spare time using the Physics Helper XAML and Farseer Physics Engine projects.

Physamajig has two types of monetization:

• PubCenter ads which show on the main hub and play screen
• In-App purchases (which unlock additional games and remove ads).

Read original post at Thomas Lebrun's Blog

For one project I’m working on, I wanted to have some live tiles on the home page.

Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to find such control (at least for Windows 8) or, to be exact, I’ve not found a control that do exactly what I wanted. Indeed, after a quick search, I found a LiveTile control in Callisto, the Framework developed by Tim Heuer. But this control is, in my mind, not perfect because it works with IEnumerable/IList objects and display always the same template for each items. But in my case, I want to be able to display 2 differents templates (one for the front item and one for the back item).