With Windows (and Phone) 8.1 there were two different device capabilities which needed to be set to use either RfComm or Bluetooth LE from your app. You had to specify a target device (or All) and target service name(s). With Windows 10 there is a simpler option. You still have to edit the appxmanifest code […]
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ShowEditNewAppointmentAsync Weirdness
The Windows.ApplicationModel.Appointments namespace in Windows 8.1 (and Windows Phone 8.1) provides access to the user’s calendar. Prior to Windows 10 there were big differences in the APIs as Phone had the existing capability to extend the calendar with app-specific calendars. Now the API is unified across Windows devices but there are some changes to be […]
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.NET 4.6 and DateTime extras
In case you missed it there is a great blog post on .NET 4.6 which is a part of Windows 10. Among the various performance and Hi-DPI improvements there are some more subtle enhancements. Perhaps as a nod to Microsoft’s new openness to other platforms there are some helper methods on DateTimeOffset for converting to […]
Some time ago I created a subset of 32feet.NET to extend the Bluetooth functionality in Windows Phone 8.0. This was for the Silverlight app model and the only API at the time was based around the Proximity APIs. When Windows Phone 8.1 came along it brought a whole new Bluetooth (and Bluetooth LE) API which […]
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Charming Storage Update
I’ve just released an update to Charming Storage on NuGet. After a lot of use in Windows Phone 8.1 projects I’ve reworked the TryGetItemAsync StorageFolder extension method to improve the performance. On average it is now takes 1/4 of the time to retrieve file items. Interestingly in Windows 10 this API becomes part of the Universal […]
Recently Xamarin Forms has been expanded to support Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1. There are instructions online for adding a Windows Phone 8.1 app to your solution and plugging it all together here:- http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/xamarin-forms/windows/getting-started/phone/ However there is a small omission which will lead to a build error – #6 tells you to remove the […]
Added in Windows Phone 8.1 was a new RfcommConnectionTrigger which allows you to host a Bluetooth service on the device and have your background task triggered when an incoming connection is established. This makes a lot of sense as having to have your app in the foreground to receive connections limits the usage somewhat. In […]
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iRAPP Remote Desktop
Firstly, just to clarify, I don’t rap – this is a post about a useful Remote Desktop server for OSX. Wait, I hear you cry, you’re a Windows developer! Well that is true but I also use Xamarin to produce apps for iOS and Android and to build and deploy iOS apps you have to […]
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Bluetooth HID on Windows Phones
Microsoft have already announced that Bluetooth HID (keyboard) support is finally coming in Windows 10, but it was quietly added in Windows Phone 8.1 GDR2. The problem is this update won’t be circulated to most phones. It is however present on the new Lumia 640 series. It’s very easy to setup a Bluetooth Keyboard with […]
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Charming Updates
I’ve made a couple of steps forward with the Charming project: 1. I’ve added a new library for Windows Phone 8.0 and 8.1 Silverlight to provide a “Universal Apps” style ResourceLoader for Silverlight (.resx) resources. It currently supports the default AppResources string table only but this is enough in most cases to reduce your #ifdefs […]
In The Hand Ltd 