Silverlight XAML to Windows Mobile 6.1/6.5 forms? - c#

Is it possible or practical to have a system in a Windows Mobile 6.1/6.5 app which takes in a silverlight XAML file and creates a representation of said XAML file with form controls?
So I guess my questions are as follows:
1) Is it practical to do?
2) How can it be done (are there any good XML parses that could be used?)
Thanks for any help!

I don't think it's practical to implement the whole XAML engine, including resources, dependency properties etc. Google for Xamlon, looks like they tried and gave up. Even Mono and Moonlight haven't tried target Windows Mobile. UPDATE: Moonlight just announced new feature “Platform Abstraction Layer” giving the potential to port it to any platform.
If very basic subset of XAML is enough for you, check this post: XAML & Windows Mobile (.Net Compact Framework) The mentioned project has a basic XAML parser.

Related

UWP File Picker Contract / Provider

I'm looking for a point in the right direction. We're thinking of building an app in our office, and one of the features we're looking at is to be able to open and save files from our app in other apps and applications.
We came across the File Picker Contract which, with some simple examples, seems to be what we're looking for. But the one thing missing is it only seems to be available in other Universal apps (but it doesn't seem all of them).
Using multiple examples, we were able to see our apps in our other apps, but I'm hoping to take it further. For example, I thought Office 2016 was a Universal app, so shouldn't File Picker Contract apps appear in there as well? And is there a way to add it globally to all File Open / Save Pickers (like from notepad, or the snipping tool)?
This MSDN page (article) seems to suggest the picker uses a single, unified interface. Shouldn't that be the same interface the rest of the operating system uses?
Thanks in advance.
If you have to support Classic Windows apps, filepickercontract is not a right solution. It's only applicable for 'modern'... Win8.1 store or Win10 UWP apps.
And, current office2016(for desktop) is not an UWP app, I believe. UWP ver of Office 2016 is only applicable for Win10 Mobile.
One alternative is make a shell extension. By using this, you can extend the explorer's shell space and add your own items to explorer tree. But shell extension is so complex, old and only applicable for desktop devicefamily. I don't think that now is a nice timing to implement it.
I hope this answer could help you.

Building apps for windows tablet.

I am new to wpf. Hence, kindly co-operate with my questions.
I want to build an app that runs on windows tablets. This is not to windows store app, rather, I will be developing this app for some company to visualize the data they have. And they will use this app on tablets or other touch enabled devices.
Background:
App will have some graphs and other visualizing diagrams. And WPF MVVM pattern will be used to develop the app.
My question:
My current system is:
System: HP elite book revolve 810 g2 tablet
.NET Framework: 4.0
Visual studio 2012
Can I develop a tablet app with the above specification?
where can i find coding documents on coding for touch devices in WPF mvvm pattern?
How can I use graph or any other visualization method in wpf. I mean, do I have any library that provides API's for different graphs?
Please help me in answering above.
Thank you
This questions will lead to long answers.. I´ll try to make it short!
The elite book revolve has an I5 and Windows 8 / 8.1. You should not have problems developing Widnows apps with that.
Visual Studio 2012 is fine as well, you might want to download the windows phone toolkit (if you want multiplatform apps).
You will need to use framwork 4.5 to develop Windows 8.1 RT apps though - and this is what you want to do if you want multi device apps. If not then it`s just normal Windows applications that can olny be runn on Windows devices (not Windows phone, or RT tablets)
It seems you are a starter in developing Touch apps.
2.1 Honestly you should consider buying a book before developing. The "Windows 8.1 Apps with XAML and C# Unleashed" one is really good
one - you can even read a good share of the first chapter with example code (see links below)!
2.2 I added a few links to ressources that could help you. Consider looking at MVVM, WPF and Touch coding independently. There are tons of tutorials available!
2.3. Doing touch support is pretty straightforward, it`s just another event handler (touchdown instead of mouseleftbutton down) so all you need is to know how to best handle events in MVVM (link attached below). Another thing is gesture support (see link)
Here is the standard library of xaml controls.. pretty basic but you can do a lot with them: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/xaml/hh465351.aspx
if you need better /more graphical controls you might consider using Developer Express or similar APIs
heres a list of the graphic tools they provide. Pretty neat: https://www.devexpress.com/products/net/controls/winrt/
Theres also a WinRT XAML Toolkit available: https://winrtxamltoolkit.codeplex.com/ (Tutorial and Graph Preview see below)
Additional Links:
Windows 8.1 Apps with XAML and C# Unleashed (example with code):
http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780672337086/samplepages/0672337088.pdf
MVVM General developing: https://joshsmithonwpf.wordpress.com/a-guided-tour-of-wpf/
MVVM in Windows 8: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj651572.aspx?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mvvm-using-the-mvvm-pattern-in-windows-8
WinRT XAML Toolkit Tutorial (Windows Store example):
http://eren.ws/2013/10/15/using-graphs-and-charts-in-windows-store-apps-boredom-challenge-day-11/
Best way of event Handling in MVVM (needed for Touch event handling):
What's the best way to pass event to ViewModel?

Proximity tap in WPF

I'm trying to detect nearby devices using NFC or RFID from within a WPF application.
Microsoft's proximity API seems to be the right way to go:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/xaml/hh465221.aspx
Unfortunately, I see no way to get it running inside a WPF application (or any other Desktop Technology that is). All examples refer to Microsoft store apps only.
From within a WPF application I cannot reference the Namespace
using Windows.Networking.Proximity;
Is it just a reference that I am missing? Is it possible to use the proximity API from a WPF application at all?
I finally found a sample project using the proximity API from within a WPF application:
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/NFC-Editor-529ccda6
There is also a short tutorial included on how to use WinRT API's in WPF applications.
The basic steps:
Manually add a <TargetPlatformVersion>8.0</TargetPlatformVersion> line to the csproj file
Back in Visual Studio, add a reference to Windows/Core/Windows to the project references
Add a reference to the Windows Runtime assemblies to the project.
See above given link for details.
I believe that the Windows.Networking.Proximity.ProximityDevice class is not available in WPF Applications. If you look on the ProximityDevice class page on MSDN, you'll see that it is part of the Windows.Phone API:
The monitor image next to the phone image also leads me to believe that it is available for Windows Store Apps too. I'm guessing that (at present at least) the vast majority of desktop computers won't have any RFC hardware that could be used with this code and so that is why it is missing from the standard .NET dlls.
[2020 is here]
Procedure to prepare your Console/WPF project to call UWP APIs (both are OK):
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/modernize/desktop-to-uwp-enhance
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2019/09/30/windows-10-winrt-api-packs-released/
Heads up: You'll need to migrate the project from the packages.config management format to the PackageReference format
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/nuget/consume-packages/migrate-packages-config-to-package-reference#migration-steps

Monogame tutorials /walkthroughs for normal Windows 7 development (not Windows 8, Android or iOS)

Can somebody point me to some good Monogame walkthroughs or tutorials?
The reason I am asking this question is because when I try to create a new project in VS2012, I get the following options
But all the tutorials or walkthroughs (like this one) have the following options and develop using xaml -
Now, I guess this is because I am using Windows 7. So can somebody give me tutorials that are actually targeted to my case.
NOTE: I am trying to develop simple and normal games for Windows 7, nothing fancy like XBox, Windows 8 or Android. Where can I find appropriate getting started walkthroughs for my situation?
There's a few MonoGame tutorials listed on the forums here:
https://monogame.codeplex.com/discussions/439595
And a related post about ideas for new MonoGame tutorials here:
https://monogame.codeplex.com/discussions/439728
As previously mentioned, the MonoGame API is syntactically compatible with XNA so most XNA tutorials will also be helpful.
There is some trickiness around dealing with content, the simplest method in my opinion is to just add it to the Content folder, set it to Content / Copy if newer in the properties window and refer to it with the file extension in code (unless it's an XNB file).
MonoGame is a great project and I highly recommend it if you want to make games for many platforms, something you may want to do sooner or later. However, it still has a few missing features compared to XNA so life may be easier in the short term, while you're learning if you stick with XNA.
Last point, your nearly there anyway, based on your first screenshot I would choose the MonoGame Windows OpenGL Project if you want to target windows 7. Learn how to render your first sprite and you may decide that proceeding with MonoGame is not so bad after all.
Most MonoGame tutorials will deal with Windows 8 or non-windows. This is because MonoGame was created as an alternative to XNA for easy porting from XNA-supported platforms (such as windows 7) to non-XNA supported platforms (such as a Windows Store App).
Note that you can still use XNA in Windows 8, but you'd be creating a desktop app, not a Windows Store App.
A great resource of example is the multi-platform sample project which contains several examples made to work on all platforms
https://github.com/Mono-Game/MonoGame.Samples
The platformer sample is on all platforms and the rest are in progress, but all show a great way to setup your project ready to tackle all the platforms out there!

Spy utility for Windows 8

I've used Snoop, it is the brilliant tool for WPF. SilverlightSpy has similar functionality for Silverlight and WP7. Does anybody know about any similar tools for Windows 8 projects?
EDIT : I mean Windows Metro style applications on C#/XAML that run in Simulator or Local Machine.
From what I've heard (and according to these posts), there really isn't a good way to do that yet. Supposedly it's coming with the next version. Semi-functional way to debug bindings now.

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