Thoughts on cross platform and HTML5

My friend Ciel and I are discussing phones as usual. He’s getting an Android from his new employer. We talk a while about apps and I tell him that if I want a platform with bad app support, I’ll choose WP7 any day. We talk a bit more and get into cross platform support. It bugs us that, aside from Mono, there is no real effort to do cross platform development for the different mobile devices. Maybe HTML5 is the future and native apps are going away as my friend Michael Björn suggests, but I don’t think were there yet.

However, when it comes to HTML5, it’s clear in my eyes who’s leading the charge. Since I attended MIX this year, I was able to pull this video clip from YouTube to show Ciel. He agreed that hardware accelerated browsing was the future and that it might prove an important aspect for app developers. I wish I could pull any event from my memory into existence in this way.

Look for me in the front row

Starting with MVVM Light for WP7

I’ve often received the question what I think of MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) as a development method. I’ve always given the same answer, that it seems nice but haven’t really had the chance to use it properly. Now I think I might have that opportunity and have started reading a series of articles on the subject at JesseLiberty.com.

The idea behind MVVM is to separate concerns and make applications easier to test and reuse components. I think I have yet to reach that point (at third lesson so far) since it so far only seems more confusing. Most developers I’ve spoken to are very positive to this approach so I’ve decided to stick with MVVM as long as I can.

The article-series I mentioned starts HERE

Find MVVM-Light toolkit HERE

 

WP7 Today and Tomorrow

Developer Economics recently published their bi-annual report on the smartphone world. There were some interesting tidbits that I wanted to look closer at. Especially those related to Windows Phone 7. For the full report, go HERE 

Meeting Avanade Finland

I met with the Finnish Avanade branch yesterday. The turnout was great and we shared a few demos, ham sandwiches and spent a few hours sauna bathing afterwards. Last time I visited Finland, I spoke about Silverlight 4 and made a camera demo. This time, I didn’t bring any new demos since the Mango tools are yet to be released. But by the time that happens, check back here and I’ll make another kind of camera demo.

Debugging Videos or Camera in WP7

I’ve today made good progress in the project I’m dedicated to. I amongst other things included a small video clip as a part of the application. As many of you know, video clips are fairly easy to handle in Silverlight. In XAML, it can be as easy as this:

<MediaElement Source="/Videos/MyVideo.wmv" AutoPlay="False"/>

When debugging though, the damned thing refused to work for me. I soon found out this was because of the method of debugging I was using. Here are the tree primary ways of debugging a WP7 application:

1. No phone, debug in emulator.

2. Phone tethered, debug in phone connected to visual studio.

3. Phone disconnected, code pre-deployed running on phone.

It turns out Media Elements will only display when in debug mode 3. Otherwise you’ll just see black or the first frame. This is also true for any camera functionality. If you have issues with your CameraCaptureTasks, try using debug mode 3.

               

Developer tip #23

Using WP7 accent color effectively

All Windows Phone 7 devices ship with ten different accent colors (mine’s orange of course). I’d like to show a few good ways to use this in XAML and runtime-code to get better looking apps.

Click below to read more…

My day with WP7 (pictures)

I spent an afternoon at Microsoft a few weeks ago trying out the code I’ve written. We were among the first in Sweden to run actual code on a live device. It was choppy, but it worked. I’m posting the censored pics here. I have a few videos which I hope to be able to share some day.

Why Office Hub is important for WP7

Many of the new features of Windows Phone 7 are similar to what you’d find on competing phones. The Zune player is much like an iPod, the Marketplace sure has some new ideas but it’s not unique in any way. The camera is high quality, but so is the camera in Nokia’s latest model. In this article, I discuss the importance of Office Hub and why it’s one of WP7’s key features.

Licking Windows Phone 7

The Devday in Stockholm yesterday was very nice. In this post, I discuss WP7 as a platform for enterprise applications, Pivot and Panorama controls and something called “Launchers and Choosers”. I very much appreciated another chance to ask questions and finally fulfill my dream to lick a Windows Phone 7.

Updated WP7 marketplace policy

When I returned from MIX earlier this year, one of the first posts I wrote concerned WP7’s marketplace policy and how crazy it was. The idea to pay both $99 annually and $99 for each submitted application would mean two things..