There is new metadata query support in Windows 10 to allow your code to react at runtime based on which APIs are available. For example if running on a phone device you may want to start a call, and offer alternative actions on a desktop PC. The correct way to check the availability is to […]
In Silverlight 8.0 there was a capability to run an application for a period of time after the user switched away to perform continuous GPS tracking for up to a few hours. With the switch to the Windows Runtime there was no direct equivalent of this. I discovered however that because there are differences with […]
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Moving Forwards: Geolocation
Recently I open-sourced a number of Compact Framework projects and when I was working on re-writing an application which used them as a Windows Runtime app I started to think about how much of the code might be useful for app projects. Obviously the API surface for Windows Runtime is totally different to the .NET Compact […]
I’ve been working on a Windows Phone 8.1 project which has several background tasks. One of these uses the device’s sensors – using a DeviceUseTrigger. This is different to how a regular periodic task works because the task implementation creates a deferral and keeps running handling the event generated by the sensor device until it is explicitly […]
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Get battery level on Windows and iOS
In Windows Phone 8.1 a new API was added to both retrieve the current battery level as a percent of fully charged and also handle an event fired when the value changed. Sadly this API is not common across this and “big” Windows. In a couple of projects I’ve needed to retrieve the battery level […]
Last Year Michel blogged about a binary incompatibility introduced in the May 2014 update of Compact 7 which broke existing Silverlight for Windows Embedded code including pre-compiled system apps. https://guruce.com/blogpost/windows-embedded-compact-may-2014-update-35-breaks-binary-compatibility-of-silverlight The XAML In The Hand library was also affected. It turns out that one of the breaking changes was the addition of the GetTemplateChild method […]
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Calendar Import Now Universal
In order to extend the app onto Windows devices I’ve re-written the Calendar Import app as a Universal app with separate UI and features for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1. Both apps add the new feature of browsing for files to import from directly within the app itself. This is on top of the […]
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Microsoft Band Initial Thoughts
I received my Band today and have just started setting it up, loading in my Starbucks card and tweaking settings. One thing which is interesting is that the phone doesn’t use GATT Bluetooth LE to expose functionality unlike some other wearables. Instead it has three RfComm services named:- Cargo Service Cargo Service 2 Push Service […]
I recently got a Lumia 930 and was looking for a simple car holder/charger for it. I saw the CR-201 (which is updated from the CR-200 and advertised as compatible with the 930) and thought it would be perfect because:- 1) It has wireless charging so just pop the phone in, no fiddling with USB […]
Last month I posted the latest “charming” helper for Windows development which is a Windows Phone (8.0 or Silverlight 8.1) ProgressRing with the same appearance as its big Windows counterpart. Today I’ve just pushed an update to NuGet which improves the flexibility of the control by allowing you to override the Foreground colour of the […]
In The Hand Ltd 