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In parallel to Daniel Egan’s excellent post on working with Live Tile Locally, I decided to glom on to his writing and parallel his message but use XAML and C++. The form has the following elements: About mid way down in Daniel’s referenced blog he shows you a simple form and two buttons...

Promises have a simple lifecycle. Initially, a promise is unresolved – it represents the expectation of receiving a result at some unspecified future time. When the result is received, the promise becomes fulfilled and the result becomes the value of the promise. If an error occurs, either in the calculation...

All right, you just graduated from college, never worked with Visual Studio and you got a lot of code built on UNIX.  You employer is purely Visual Studio and Windows, they don’t want to support a separate operating system.  You could quit, but they pay so well, the medical and dental plan...

C++, not Visual C++ is the center language for Metro Design, not C#, at least in my opinion.  There aren’t any books as I am writing this post, so you are on your won.  If you need to brush up on your programming skills here are some books you might want to take a look at.  Then again...

Hover buttons, pretty cool, but not well explained in the documentation that I have found.  Hover buttons add a cool effect and cause hovering of an object over another object to appear to be similar to a click. The best examples of using the Hover buttons are found at: http://raychambers.wordpress...

What are the secrets of C++ programming?  With the XAML and C++ tools and templates, C++ is not much more than C# to program with and you don’t have to use .NET anymore.  Unless you want to. So the secret is that we are all out of practice working with C++ generally (if you are reading this...

First see the forum comment at: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tfssetup/thread/2bc48ea2-a652-4f98-9676-2243675c43fa make sure to have IIS up and running and the installation is slick.  So run that cmd code as an administrator. Follow the instructions on that site. Then come back here...

And just what the heck does this have to do with building quality apps?  Well, first of all a quality app don’t get hung up and freeze.  If you use WinRT, then WinRT can help you prevent freezing.  So no, this isn’t about a blend of icy goodness it is to prevent freezing and other issues...

Some people complain that my titles make no sense.  But they do.  To me.  And you right?  After all you are reading this so the title or something got you to this URL.  I think a title like: “Gibberish, followed by the Spanish Inquisition, which no one expected, with a little...

This is an awesome article about how to port a WIndows Phone app to Windows 8.  Instructions, etc. Well written. As you might think: “Well Written?  This can’t be written by Sam then!”  And that would be correct, it is on CodeProject: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/375173/Hacking...

Vectors operations are similar to Matrix operations, but there is usually a need for faster calculations.  On one of my jobs in the 1980s we had to create a digital system that could do calculations very rapidly and with the power supply had to be lighter and smaller then a similar electrical analog...

Anything with a pound symbol in front of a word is used to give direction to the preprocessor.  So the first time you run into the pound symbol (#) usually is something like the following: #include <algorithm> #include <iostream> #include <vector> #include "DirectXMath.h"...

Well, apparently there is some concern about the messaging around DirectX 11 and Windows 8. Right now as of 5/11/2012 I am accessing DirectX via C++. This means that if you are thinking about low level graphics design, then you may consider it important to get up to speed with Direct2 and Direct3...

My inner space alien made it’s visit and was asking me about the whole idea around MetroRT, Win8 and other stuff.  First of all the Inner Space Alien wanted to know what in the heck is MetroRT?  Since the only written material in the Universe that mentions MetroRT is my blog, so there must...

Blah-blah Using CompositeTransitions to make an interesting look in the tablet. And yes this would work in the Win7 world as well. I initially started this blog to whine about the changes in some of the functionality of XAML but got distracted. Also, this effort came up when one of my teammates (...

XAML, making things move, is referred to as animation.  If you are a follower of XNA, animation usually refers to something else, like reading spritesheets or running things into other things. In XAML, well designed apps make things move in small ways that make apps look good.  Many of the...

After months of eager anticipation, Windows 8 is finally here.   To kick things off, Microsoft will be hosting a large-scale event at SVC featuring Robert Youngjohns and Matt Thompson . Both are FREAKING AWESOME and totally intune speakers.  We are lucky to get Matt Thompson, with depth of...

After spending most of the last 20 years looking for the intellisense after I hit a period, the XAML/C++ was a bit of surprise, not much though.  It isn’t clear how this works unless you have worked through the SimpleBlogReader. Here is what I did to create my Hello World app using XAML and C++...

Charles Petzold free eBook is great , except that it doesn’t cover the use of Sliverlight-XNA tools that are in the current version of Windows Phone. One of the most reliable source on how to use the Silverlight XNA hybrid is the MSDN Article at: How to: Combine Silverlight and the XNA...

I had converted an image to a XAMLfile using Expression Design 4.    Then I added the existing Image.XAML to Blend 4 then converted the Image.XAML from an image to being a Usercontrol, which means that it has a “code behind” C# project connected to it.  (I got turned on this process through...

You can easily make an Image Button with a few lines of XAML. What a blast right? When your parents get home, you can show them this and they might think you actually did something other than play Halo 3 or Kinect all day. Or if you are working, well get back to work. First open Visual Studio, you...

Oh boy, thanks for making it to this blog.  This entry is going to be a low number, so I customized it just for you.  Ok, not really, but since there are likely so few numbers, you can feel unique. Someone has to write these kinds of blogs.  After all I can only write about security issues...

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) has 3 classes that allow you to use multimedia in your applications. The classes are: Soundplayer: Lightweight and easy to use, will run on Windows XP MediaPlayer: No visual interface, cannot display videos, requires Windows Media 10 or higher MediaElement...

Events in WPF (and Silverlight) are dealt with differently, using “Routing Events”.  Why? Routed events enable you to add multiple levels of complexity to your UIs and the response to user input. What do you need to know about the concept of routed events: How to handle a routed event http://msdn...

Calvin Hobbes on Writing -- I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and  impenetrable fog! ___________________________________________________________________________...