Dave is a Principal Technical Evangelist for Microsoft focused on Windows, Windows Phone, Windows Azure and the Web. Based out of the Greater Philadelphia Area.
Those of you who have been following my blog for a while are probably familiar with what DoodlePad is. For those new, DoodlePad is a fun little sketch app I wrote for my kids when Windows Phone was launched in the fall of 2010. It has done fairly well (at least by my own standards) since launch with over 35,000 downloads globally for both the free and paid versions.
DoodlePad was never intended to be a full featured art application but more of an easy to use, simple UI that anyone could pick up and sketch or take pictures with. The reviews have been largely positive with the negative reviews revolving around drawing performance. Unfortunately, as you will see in the code, the drawing performance comes form the Ink Presenter class in the Windows Phone Runtime itself. Since I chose to go with the native Silverlight capabilities rather than an XNA approach there wasn’t anything I could do about performance without a re-write.
The app itself is still making money but I knew in my heart I had no intention of going back and rewriting it. I also switched roles at Microsoft last year from Windows Phone to a Technology Evangelist for Windows 8. Technically speaking I’ve been going much deeper on the JavaScript and HTML5 side of the house lately and to take on a full XAML/C# project, especially for an app that is towards end of life, didn’t seem worth investing in. So why not give the code back to you, the community, as a way to get started with your own apps! I’m continually impressed by what I see developers doing with Windows Phone and if my code helps them with their app than that’s worth more than any money I’d make each month.
Thanks to Microsoft’s generous moonlighting policy for employees writing Windows Phone applications I own all the code. So I’ve chose to release it under an Apache 2.0 license and post it up to Github here.
I am not including a NOTICE file with the Apache license so you are pretty much free to do with the code what you want. If you want to thank me you can include a link to my twitter (http://twitter.com/thedavedev) in your code or app credits but totally not required. I’ve also included all of my cusotm icons as Expression Design files so if you have been looking for additional resources for your apps feel free to re-use. Enjoy!
- Dave
The release of Windows 8 is on the horizon, and soon millions of people will be looking for Windows 8 apps. Now’s the time to make sure your app is ready for them.
Begin your 30-day journey to create a great Windows 8 Metro style app. Get started at www.generationapp.com and receive:
· Insider tips and tricks on Windows 8 application development.
· Personal on-the-phone access to a Windows 8 architect*.
· An exclusive one-on-one Metro style design consultation*.
· An opportunity to get expert help from a Microsoft Services Engineer at an App Excellence Lab.
Your new Windows 8 app could be mere days away.
* Offer good only to legal residents in the 50 United States & D.C., age 18 or older to hobbyists, professionals or developers in the field of software tech who sign up for building a Windows 8 application on www.generationapp.com. Offer limited to 250 design consultations per month and 500 technical review consultations per month, on a first come first served basis. Limit of one session of each offer type per person. This offer is non-transferable and cannot be combined with any other offer. This offer ends when supplies are exhausted, and is not redeemable for cash.
Update – July 12th – Updated with Codeplex project info.
In order to give easier access to all of the sample code and starter kits I am now hosting everything on my Codeplex account with all of the source being replicated from my GitHub account.
This means you will be able to grab the latest source code builds from both Codeplex and Github, whichever ones you prefer to work with.
Right now there are four repositories broken down as follows:
As always, all of this code is for demonstration purposes only. Microsoft and I offer no warranties or support for it. It’s sole purpose is to helps you get started in writing your own amazing apps!
Have fun!
-Dave
During the past couple of months I’ve been hacking around in the world of HTML5 Canvas and casual gaming. The community that has formed up around HTML5 Gaming in particular is awesome and I am continually impressed by what I’ve seen.
Not to mention I’m a big retro gaming fan – 8 bits anyone?
With that in mind I wanted to contribute back to the community if I could. I figured the best way I could do that was to take the experience I have writing Windows 8 Metro Style Apps and combine them with the world of HTML5 Canvas based gaming.
Things were super easy to bring over from a code perspective. All of my layout is done through CSS3 (including media queries for ViewState), the game loop is straight up HTML5 Canvas with requestAnimationFrame, the music uses HTML5 Audio Tags, and the sounds use third party JavaScript libraries like SoundJS.
You can grab the sourcecode from Codeplex here:
Or GitHub here:
I am replicating all the source back between GitHub into Codeplex so regardless of where you fork you will always have the latest source.
If you decide to write a Windows 8 app and want to get into the Windows Store I would love to hear about it! You may also want to check out my previous Windows 8 Metro Style Development Tips:
Happing Coding!