In The Hand Ltd

Windows

  • Thy Phone for Windows 11

    In the recent Windows 11 22H2 release Microsoft deprecated a number of APIs used for making phone calls. Previously Thy Phone had used these because they presented a standard Windows dialog for call handling (incoming and outgoing) and the experience… Continue reading

  • Improving Keyboard Navigation with NavigationView

    Thy Phone uses the NavigationView control to provide a pop out navigation pane to provide a similar UI to Your Phone. I was contacted this week by a user indicating problems with the app for blind users – it doesn’t… Continue reading

  • We Don’t Talk About IrDA

    We take for granted that every mobile phone, tablet and laptop has Bluetooth built in, and probably use it all the time for headphones, mice etc without even thinking about developing software for it. There was a time long ago… Continue reading

  • Back to the Future With C++/WinRT

    Recently I was asked to investigate a scenario for a desktop C++ application. It was something I’d done before with C# and used a number of WinRT APIs. This meant I had to refresh myself in C++ which has changed… Continue reading

  • Bluetooth and Windows 11

    It’s still early days for Windows 11 but pre-release API documentation is available on Microsoft Docs and it gives some hints of new functionality for developers:- BluetoothLEDevice gains functionality to request preferred connection parameters. These include minimum and maximum connection… Continue reading

  • Bluetooth Virtual Sniffer for Windows

    I only just found out about this but Microsoft released a packet sniffer for Bluetooth on Windows 10 back in February. This is incredibly useful for debugging and is something I’ve been craving for some time. Previously I’ve been able… Continue reading

  • New Windows Phone App

    Okay, now I’ve drawn you in with a click-bait headline I need to clarify a little! For some time now Windows 10 has had a tightly integrated app called Phone Link (previously Your Phone) which allows you to interact with… Continue reading

  • What’s in a BluetoothLEDevice.Name

    I’ve noticed an odd behaviour when creating a BluetoothLEDevice from a found device id. I’m not doing anything special, just retrieving paired devices and then trying to access the relevant BluetoothLEDevice. In common with all Windows device searches (whether by… Continue reading

  • Bluetooth Virtual COM Ports

    I was thinking about a comment on a Gist I wrote some time ago and thought I’d written a blog post on the topic, but when I couldn’t find any sign of it I decided to start from scratch as… Continue reading

  • WPF Activity in Xamarin Forms

    I’ve recently been working on extending an existing product written in Xamarin Forms to Windows desktop and this has meant learning a lot more about the WPF implementation. Originally Xamarin Forms was created for mobile platforms such as Android and… Continue reading

    WPF Activity in Xamarin Forms