Persist ListView scroll position without setting NavigationCacheMode 23. July 2015 Shawn Windows Apps (0) Use the ListViewPersistenceHelper to persist the scroll position of a ListView in Windows apps. [More]
A simpler FilePicker for Windows Phone and Windows apps 1. July 2015 Shawn Windows Runtime (0) If you’ve built a Windows Phone app that uses the FileOpenPicker you know that it can be a pain while the Windows variation is pretty simple to use. In Windows you use the PickSingleFileAsync method and continue code as you think you would. StorageFile storageFile = await openPicker.PickSingleFileAsync();// Do something with the file However in Windows Phone this becomes a little more complex. It’s especially complex when you look at the sample on MSDN. First you call the PickSingleFileAndContinue method, then in App.xaml.cs wait for the app to be activated, then somehow get back to where you were before. It’s a mess. I wanted to make this easier in a recent app I was working on and I wanted it to work the same for Windows and Windows Phone. To get started you’ll need to know that the CoreApplicationView can give us access to when the app is activated. With this, we can bypass all the weirdness of using the App class. CoreApplication.GetCurrentView().Activated += OnViewActivate... [More]
Creating a behavior or action to close a Flyout from a control within the Flyout 8. May 2015 Shawn Universal Apps (0) I recently started work on a new project and I’m trying hard to use “no code-behind”. This has been challenging for me as I tend to always put very view specific logic within the view itself. Things like navigation, starting storyboards or showing popups/flyouts. One thing I was trying to do recently was close a Flyout from a button within the flyout. My first approach was to try an EventTriggerBehavior for the Click event of the button along with the CallMethodAction. I tried two ways to call the Hide method on the flyout. 1: <Button x:Name="AddButton" Content="Add Item" > 2: <Button.Flyout> 3: <Flyout x:Name="AddItemFlyout" 4: Placement="Full"> 5: <StackPanel> 6: <TextBox x:Name="PlaceName" Header="Name"/> 7: <Grid> 8: <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> 9: <ColumnDefinition/> 10: <Col... [More]
Animating list items within Windows apps 17. April 2015 Shawn Windows Apps (0) In a previous post I’ve talked about some page transitions and animations within Windows apps. There are many other locations where adding animations is very easy. One of these is animating items within any ItemsControl class. This includes controls like the ListView/GridView controls. The ItemsControl exposes the ItemContainerTransitions property. This property exposes a TransitionCollection, the same collection I talked about in the previous post. One of the key transitions you’ll want to look at is the EntranceThemeTransition. The EntranceThemeTransition defines how items will enter the region when they are rendered. It contains three properties. FromVerticalOffset and FromHorizontalOffset define the where the item should start rendering, with respect to where the final location will be. So if you have a FromVerticalOffset of 100, the item will begin an entrance animation 100 pixels below where it will end. The last property IsStaggeringEnabled, defines if all items should animate ... [More]
In depth look at the Windows RelativePanel 9. April 2015 Shawn Windows Apps (0) Windows 10 released a lot of new functionality and controls. One of the new controls is the RelativePanel. This panel takes the great Grid panel and cranks it up to 11. The Grid panel gives a lot of control with how you layout controls. You specify rows and columns of various heights and widths and then place controls within the grid and define the row and/or column through attached properties. Instead of rows/columns, the RelativePanel places controls relative to itself or other controls within it. Just like the Grid, the RelativePanel uses 16 different attached properties to define where elements should be placed. In fact, the RelativePanel has no additional properties or methods from a regular Panel. It only contains attached properties. Aligning relative to the RelativePanel The relative panel does not respect controls with traditional alignment via HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment. Instead there are six new properties to define how an element should align relative to th... [More]
Registering to any DependencyProperty changing in Windows 10 Apps 1. April 2015 Shawn Windows Apps (0) Many have argued that there are pieces still missing from Windows Runtime XAML that were in WPF. One item that was in WPF was the ability to be notified when a DependencyProperty changed. This functionality is now available in Windows Apps thanks to the new RegisterProperrtyChangedCallback method on DependencyObject. This opens up a world of opportunities for us. This functionality is extremely useful when creating custom controls or wrapping existing controls. Rather than getting into anything complex, I’ll show a quick sample. A TextBlock control has Text, but no way to be notified when the text changes. We do have the ability to bind to the Text, but we’ll ignore that for now. We’ll create two TextBlocks and one Button. <StackPanel> <TextBlock x:Name="CounterText"/> <Button Content="Click me" Click="OnButtonClicked"/> <TextBlock x:Name="DuplicateTextBlock"/></StackPanel> When the button is clicked we’ll set the text for the first TextBlock... [More]
Enabling and tracking location in Windows Apps 26. March 2015 Shawn Windows Apps (0) Track geo location within Windows 10 Apps (preview) [More]
Displaying HTML content in a TextBlock 16. January 2015 Shawn Behavior, Universal Apps (0) So many apps are using third party services to display data. Some of these services may give detailed information in HTML format. Why would they give information in HTML? Simple it’s universal. Everyone can display HTML. All of the platforms have some form of a webview control to display HTML. I recently came across such a service that actually gave information in both plain text and HTML. The plain text did not offer the detail that the HTML content did. So I set out to create a way to display the HTML inside a TextBlock. You may ask why I did not use a Webview control and I’ll say with a smile “Because I didn’t want to”. I’ll be 100% honest here, I took some pointers from the HtmlAgilityPack. I should note that this is not intended to display an entire website. You can adjust it to work, but just don’t. To tackle this task I created a new Behavior that would adjust the text of a TextBlock when it was loaded. The Runtime Interactivity SDK does not include a base Behavior class like th... [More]
Color and font resources to build a brand for your app 6. November 2014 Shawn Design (0) I recently found out about some great sites that are available to help you build a brand for you app. These sites allow you to build a color palette or get custom fonts that help brand the app you are building. This is only a small list and if you know about others, please add a comment. Color Palette: color.adobe.com – source: Dave Crawford coolers.co – source: Dave Timmins paletton.com – source: Scott Lovegrove Fonts: fontsquirrel.com – source: Dave Crawford google.com/fonts – source: Glenn Versweyveld Again, if you know of more resources, please add a comment below!
What is the email sent from responding to user reviews in the Windows Phone store? 3. November 2014 Shawn Windows Store (0) Some time ago Microsoft announced that all app publishers to the Windows Phone Store had the ability the respond to users reviews of their apps. Many publishers have taken advantage of this functionality and many have not. Responding to reviews is simple. All you need to do is log into DevCenter, check out the reviews of your app(s) and respond to any that you wish. You can respond to negative reviews or positive reviews. I like to respond to any user that has rated my app three stars or less. I want to know why a user thinks the app is only a 1-3 star app and ask how they think I can improve the app. If they provided a reason for the 1-3 star rating I’ll try to clarify any confusion there may be.I also like to respond to any user asking for a particular piece of functionality. I will tell the user that what they are asing for is either in progress, will be worked on next, or will be taken into account for future work. One thing I kept on wondering was: “How is my feedback being deliv... [More]