Monthly Archives: June 2014

My first Windows Store application!

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My first application for Windows Store is already published! It is a very simple application but now I know the complete process to publish an application on Windows Store.

The application is localized, at the moment available in English and Spanish. More Localization details.

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I have developed this application before for Windows Phone.  I used a Portable class library to implement the Business Logic of the application – Models and Common classes.  The Views and View Models are contained in different platform specific projects (Windows 8.1 + Windows Phone 8) . More details here.

These are a couple of screenshots of the Application:

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It is optimized to run on PCs and Tablets with Windows 8.1. You can execute it in full screen or snapped mode. More details here.

Snapped mode

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Tablet simulator

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I will publish a small guide with the requirements to publish an application on Windows Store soon, the process is easy and very good explained, but there are some stuff to prepare: an email contact, privacy policy link, application screenshots, etc.!

Creating a WordPress web site in Windows Azure

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Today I played around with my WordPress. There were some things I wanted to try without risking my blog. I decided to create a new WordPress just for testing. This was a good opportunity to test out once more Microsoft Azure.

Windows Azure offers a lot of great services: Virtual Machines, Web Sites, Mobile Services, etc. There are different Purchase Options. I am using “Pay as you Go” this allows me not only to test Windows Azure but also to use some of their services for free.

Microsoft offers up to 10 web sites for free with up to 5GB of storage:


Creating a WordPress instance within Microsoft Azure is really easy, we have just to create a new web site using the WordPress template:

( If you want a complete and detailed guide Microsoft has already a great one: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/web-sites-php-web-site-gallery/ )

If you just want to know briefly the needed steps:

1. Create an account in Windows Azure.

2. Open Windows Azure portal and click “New” at the bottom left corner.

3. Select Web site > From Gallery.

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3.  Select the WordPress app from the list of Blogs.

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4. Enter the URL of your website and some administration details and you are done!

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It takes 5 minutes (if you are already register Smile with tongue out ) to create a WordPress instance in Azure, here I can play around with things like e-Commerce Plugins.

My testing WordPress –> http://juancarlos.azurewebsites.net/

References:

Windows 8.1 – Localization

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Today I want to share how I localized my Windows Store application, very easy! Localization can also be implemented using “Resources File (.resw)” files. I will try it soon but first I wanted to implement a solution using my already existing resx files.

To test the developing process for Windows Store and Windows Phone I am using this project structure:

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All localization terms are already in a portable class library, so that they are share between the Windows Phone and Windows 8 applications.

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The terms are contained in “resx” files:

  • AppResources.resx (default app language, English)
  • AppResources.es-ES.resx  (Spanish)
  • AppResources.fra.FR.resx (French)

These files contains a list of string properties that we can create be created easily using the editor:

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Once the project is compiled a class “AppResources” with a property of type string with each entrance of the table is created. The value of the string is resolved using the resx corresponding to the current language of the UI Thread.

There are several ways to use this resources files in XAML, I wanted to use them with the support of IntelliSense, with my solution it is possible to define a common Localization Provider on my App.xaml that uses the resources files contained by the portable class library: Continue reading →

Windows 8.1 – Application life-cycle

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Windows 8.1 keeps in memory the status of an application when the user sends it to background. Although the application’s threads are frozen after about 10 seconds, the application status is kept in memory until the OS runs out of resources.

When the OS needs resources the application could be removed from memory and if this happens the status is lost.

Understanding the possible status of the application and the related events helps to create a better user experience.
e.g.: Serializing the application status to disk when it’s suspended to recover it later.

This diagram describes the life cycle of a Windows 8.1 application.

Windows 8.1 App Lifecycle

Windows 8.1 App Lifecycle

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