Last Friday Christian Beauclair of Microsoft did an install clinic in Montreal. So i scheduled an appointment to install the application I'm currently building for the TechDays. I was really impressed by the quality of the OS. It run really smooth and faster compare to it predecessor WM 6.5.
To install the application on the device we took the XAP file and deploy it to the device using the XAP Deployment application.
I was surprised because the application was running smoother on the Device compared to the Emulator (animation, progress bar, etc.).
But when there is some issue related with the development. Like in my case, the application need to get a lot of information from a web service and I was getting most of the information at the start-up of the application, which was wrong. So i took some time to convert to use a MVVM approach, which increase the performance of the application. So now I'm downloading only the data that i need. Next step, is to apply this technic to every page in the application. That was a great experience, this confirm that the experience on with the emulator in pretty similar.
Also when i was fixing some issues, i was able to test the debugging on the device. If you doesn’t know you can debug you application the same way your doing it on the emulator but directly on the device. So if you have any issue related directly to the device you will be able to fixe it directly with the device.
An important note for the developers who want to deploy the application directly to a device like i did, when you will get a device you need to create an account on the Marketplace to deploy the applications you are creating. Then you will be allowed to unlock 3 devices. What I'm saying by unlocking a device, it unlock the OS so you can deploy. This doesn’t remove the lock from the carrier.
Next step, getting the RTM version of the Developer tools on Thursday, September 16 2010. After what we will have to wait for the real device which will be available for the holidays.
Until then if you have created any Windows Phone 7 application, don’t miss the Deployment clinic in a city near you . You can look at some event date at Canadian Developer Connection.
Regards,
LP
Since a couple of year i was watching my brother reading with his Kindle. Since a couple of year i was increasing my eBook collection but I'm not a big fan of reading on my pc. As a developer, i usually read technical book. Most of the time those book are pretty big and heavy. So this summer i finally decided to order the new version of the Kindle. This solve most of my problem about reading some book. So now i can have my whole eBook collection with me at anytime.
I’m very impressed by the device. The screen is so magical. When you watch the screen you don’t believe you are reading on an electronic device. The 6” screen is perfect size for me. It’s not too big and not too small. And for the weight, we cannot compare to device to a book because it’s so light.
Currently most of my eBook are currently in PDF. This device can read PDF. But, the PDF reader is not the best for the 6” device. Usually the eBook display the proper amount of text the be easily read by the user. But when we read a PDF i display the whole page. So you have to zoom in the page to display and move the zoom area to read the page. So in my opinion this will need some improvement.
On the other side, there is some workaround to solve this issue. You can use some software to convert the PDF to a compatible eBook format like “.mobi”. So you can use MobiPocket to convert the PDF and manage your eBooks.
Or you can use Calibre. This is the current software I'm using.
The device include some experimental feature like the web browser, which work very well. The pages are rendered very nicely.
Also there is a text-to-speech feature, which allow you to listen while you Kindle is reading you book for you. And i can confirm you that this feature which still experimental work very well.
In conclusion, i can only recommend the latest Kindle. For 139$, every developer should have one, so they wont have to bring their 5 pounds book everyday.
Regards,
LP
Microsoft release today a service release for Silverlight. This service release fix issues that were in introduce in the RTW version:
- SDK feature to enable Add New Row capabilities in DataGrid control
- Improving startup performance of Silverlight applications
- Adding mouse wheel support for out-of-browser applications on the Mac platform
- Various media-related fixes around DRM content
- Fixed memory leak when MouseCapture is used
- Fixed memory leak for DataTemplate usage
Lately i was working on project that were affected by the DataTemplate memory leak. So i was waiting for that fix. I hope this will help.
The only thing we need to do to apply the latest change is to set the “minRuntimeVersion” and “autoUpgrade” int the object tag:
<param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="4.0.50826.0" />
<param name="autoUpgrade" value="true" />
For more information:
http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2010/09/01/silverlight-service-release-september-2010-gdr1.aspx
Regards,
LP
Today there was very interesting news. Windows Phone 7 was Released to Manufacturing. This is a really good now because it mean that they are on the good track to release some phone to the market for the holidays.
To read more about the news:
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/.../windows-phone-7-released-to-manufacturing.aspx
Regards
LP
This summer is going to fast! Mainly i was working on many project at the same time. I was lucky because most of them were Silverlight. So i had reduce the time i had to work on my blog. Now most of them are completed. So i expect to have more free time to play with Windows Phone 7, read some books and wrote some blogs.
So this autumn will be exiting. First the development tools for Windows Phone 7 will be finalize and released on September 16th. I’m can wait to work with it. So as soon as I can, I will convert the application for the TechDays I'm working on and I'll publish the source code on Codeplex.
On the community side, i will do a presentation on Windows Phone 7 (November 15th) at the .NET Montreal user group. I expect to have a lot of fun for this session has i have a lot of information to share. Also for those who assist at user group there is a “Speaker Idol” again this year. I encourage everyone who want to share his passion about .NET to participate. It the way i begun speaking. I’ll be there to encourage all the participant.
Again this year, Microsoft Canada organized the TechDays which will stop in Montreal on November 23-24. There is a great list of session. Again, i will probably speak at this event (subject need to be confirmed) again this year.
Have fun coding!
LP