C#

Windows 8 TouchInjection with C#

The Windows 8 platform provides an API to inject touch events (WM_TOUCH..) via a C++ API. The API is relatively easy to use, but not available in C#, unless you do DllImport/PInvoke. I found this to be kind of tricky, but finally I succeeded to make a C# library that can be used to use the TouchInjection API from C#. You can find TCD.System.TouchInjection on NuGet, or have a look at the TouchInjection.cs file itself. You may notice that I renamed all the strucs, enums and classes to look nicer than their C++ counterparts. The IntelliSense descriptions are available for almost everything! (I got them from the documentation on msdn..) I’ve made a sample application for the MSDN Code Gallery as well. Here’s a small collection of useful resources regarding the TouchInjection API: C++ sample application C++ TouchInjection API walkthrough

C#

TCD.Controls

This is a summary and manual for all controls inside the TCD.Controls package. I’ll try to keep it updated. Windows 8 SilentTextBox – If AcceptsReturn=False and the user hits Enter normal TextBoxes make a ‘bling’ sound. SilentTextBox does not. HeaderedTextBox – A TextBox with a grey header above HeaderedTextBlock – A TextBlock with a grey header above; Automatically hides itself if the Text property is empty (unless AutoHide is set to False). LabeledProgressBar – a ProgressBar coupled with a TextBlock/Label; use it at the top of your page to indicate background progress (like the SystemTray.ProgressBar on Windows Phone) LayoutAwarePage – same as in all the samples Flyout – most recent post and how to use on Flyout SettingsContractWrapper – the easy way to integrate with the settings contract   Windows Phone CustomMessageBox – Async CustomMessageBox on Windows Phone ReverseAutocompletePopup – Making a reverse Autocomplete-TextBox on Windows Phone

C#

TCD.Device

Just another TCD namespace: TCD.Device. Its purpose is to contain additional namespaces that use features like Camera, GPS, Accelerometer, Compass.. Everything that has an effect on the App permissions the user sees on the Windows Phone or Windows 8 application. (Like ‘This app has access to your location, compass..’) TCD.Device.Camera CodeScannerPopup is another async control, specific to the Windows Phone platform, that can be used to scan for QR codes. (In theory other 2D-codes as well.) Usage: add the TCD.Device.Camera NuGet package add using directives for TCD.Device.Camera and TCD.Device.Camera.Barcodes in the calling method (eg. a Button.Click event) hide/show ApplicationBar, attach/remove BackKeyPress event Code sample: private async void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { CodeScannerPopup scp = new CodeScannerPopup(Microsoft.Phone.Shell.SystemTray.IsVisible, Format.ALL_1D); //important: hide ApplicationBar and handle BackKeyPress ApplicationBar.IsVisible = false; this.BackKeyPress += scp.HandleBackKeyPress; //now let’s go ScanResult r = await scp.ShowAsync(“BARCODE SCANNER”, “scan”); if (r != null) output.Text = string.Format(“{0}n{1}”, r.Text, r.Format.ToString()); //clean…

C#

TCD.Controls – Flyouts for XAML/C#

Hey there, Let’s start with the most important news: TCD.Controls is now available on NuGet (click here if you don’t know how this works, or why you want to use it) From now on, I won’t link *.zip packages with the sources anymore, because NuGet really make life easier. If you want access to the source files, just drop me an email There’s been one more or less important change to the Flyout control you should know about: It now has a property called “IsIgnoreLightDismissal”. To understand its purpose, imagine the following scenario (video below) You have a Button control that opens a FilePicker/FolderPicker, asking the user to select a File/Folder. This Button is hosted inside a Flyout control. Now when the user taps the Button, the Picker will popup, stealing the focus from your applications Window. Flyouts are required to hide on App-switch by the design guidelines, which is…

C#

Exploring NuGet

Since 5 hours now, I ‘m on NuGet and I’d like to share my first experiences. Why did I join NuGet? I joined NuGet, because it seems to be the most comfortable way to share libraries, containing XAML controls. Share them between my own projects, as well as with you. Previously I always had to include the project containing the controls in the solution I was working on, which was really annoying.. How can you use it? Let’s assume that you want to use a package in your project. All you need is the NuGet Package Manager Visual Studio extension. You can install it via Tools/Extensions and Updates. To use/reference a package from NuGet right-click on the references in the solution explorer and select ‘Manage NuGet Packages’. Then you can search for the package you desire (for example ‘TCD.Serialization’) and add it to your project. How do I use it?…

C#

Save objects to the ‘LocalFolder’

IMPORTANT: You find the newest versions of TCD.Serialization on NuGet – it works with Windows Phone as well. This post will Show you how to serialize and save objects with XML to your apps LocalFolder/RoamingFolder. Metro style apps in Windows 8 have their own folders where they can store their data. These folders can be accessed by: StorageFolder localFolder = ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder; StorageFolder roamingFolder = ApplicationData.Current.RoamingFolder; The difference between these two folders is that Windows 8 will synchronise the RoamingFolder between different machines. This can be useful if you want to improve the user experience, for example by synchronising drafts of a blog post between a users tablet and PC. It’s very important, that the data you want to save is serializable. When designing the data structure and classes for your data, you got to make sure, that each class has a parameterless constructor. Properties can be marked with a set…

Metro

Column-Styled GridView

Today I had to figure out a way to make a single-row, column-styled GridView that looked like this: Some minor design improvements are still to be made, but the hardest part is done. Particulary tricky was, that the items didn’t want to Stretch the height. (I wanted to avoid hard-coding the height, because of different screen resolutions.) Finally I’m using a GridView – I archived almost the same results with a ListView, but the ScrollBar was gone.. Maybe this is possible with a ListBox as well, but maybe I want to integrate this with a SemanticZoom control later, which requires ListView or GridView. Here’s a screenshot of the XAML code: You can copy/paste the following: <GridView ItemsSource=”{Binding Mensen}” SelectionChanged=”GridView_SelectionChanged”>                 <GridView.ItemTemplate>                     <DataTemplate>                         <Grid Background=”Green” Width=”250″>                             <Grid.RowDefinitions>                                 <RowDefinition Height=”Auto” />                                 <RowDefinition Height=”*” />                             </Grid.RowDefinitions>                             <TextBlock Grid.Row=”0″ Text=”{Binding Titel}” Foreground=”{StaticResource ListViewItemOverlayForegroundThemeBrush}” Style=”{StaticResource TitleTextStyle}” Height=”60″ Margin=”15,0,15,0″…

C#

Migrating TCD to Windows 8 Release Preview

Two days ago, I migrated my laptop to Windows 8 Release Preview and today Windows Live Mesh finished syncing all of my files. So in the last few hours I migrated all the dev stuff and I’d like to share the latest versions of them too. Most of the libraries haven’t changed that much, only their namespaces have changed from TCD.Windows8.xxxx to TCD.xxxx. TCD.Serialization TCD.Serialization.Xml.XmlDeSerializer – (de)serialize an object from/to a string or Stream using XML TCD.Serialization.Json.JsonDeSerializer – (de)serialize an object from/to a string or Stream using JSON Download TCD.Serialization.zip TCD.Controls TCD.Controls.Flyout – create your own Flyout TCD.Controls.Settings.SettingsContractWrapper – integrate with the settings contract in just a few lines of code Download FlyoutAndSettingsSample.zip

C#

XML and JSON (De)Serialization in WinRT and Windows Phone

In some of my recent Metro/WinRT projects I had to save data to the disk. I decided to go for Xml-serialzation, because it’s human-readable, and flexible. Also it was perfect for the data I wanted to save (eg. metadata about a movie). (If you want to do it on your own: System.IO and System.Xml.Serialization are the namespaces you need for XML (de)serialization.) As I needed this in many projects, I composed a small library, containing a TCD.Serialization.XmlDeSerializer as well as a TCD.Serialization.JsonDeSerializer. Both have four static methods to serialize to/from Stream and string. You can download a package with the sources and a ready-to-use dll. TCD.Serialzation is available on NuGet it works with Windows Phone as well. NOTE: the methods aren’t fail-safe, so you might need to try{}catch{} them to handle exceptions. (For example if you want to serialize to a FileStream without write permission.) Have fun and let me hear…