Mike Taulty's Blog

Windows Azure, Scott Guthrie, 22nd June, London

mtaulty — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:47:12 GMT

A quick plug for an event in London on the 22nd June. Scott Guthrie will be in the UK and will be keynoting a 4-track event on the Microsoft Cloud. You can grab tickets here: http://azureconference2012.eventbrite.com/ and the first 50 look to be free whereas the price then becomes £25 for the rest ( from what I can see on the website ). Enjoy!...(read more)

HTML Authoring Features for Metro style apps in Blend

mtaulty — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:41:00 GMT

Nice video over on BlendInsiders giving an overview of using Blend for Windows 8 Metro style apps. Watch over here . Don't give up on it at the "Hello World" point - it goes quite a way beyond that....(read more)

"Programming Windows" goes Windows 8

mtaulty — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:15:00 GMT

Great to see that the "Programming Windows" book is getting a Windows 8 and Metro style app update and will be published for the Consumer Preview edition of Windows 8 as an eBook on the 17th May for $10. I'll be buying a copy :-) It's also interesting to see that the focus will be on XAML and C# with some C++. For more details, see the timetable ....(read more)

Windows 8 Metro Style– Bits of Binding

mtaulty — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 23:08:23 GMT

Data binding is a useful tool in putting an application together and I’ve spent quite a long time with various frameworks that support different aspects of binding. In the last few years, that has mainly revolved around the binding support that you find in XAML based applications for WPF, Silverlight and Silverlight for Windows Phone 7. Recently I put together that simple example of a music application and I thought I’d revisit that with a view to taking a look at how that might be data-bound for...(read more)

Hands-On Windows 8 Camps in May

mtaulty — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 22:51:00 GMT

A quick plug for a number of hands-on camp events that we have around Windows 8 running next month spanning (for the minute) London and Birmingham; London, Wednesday 9 th May 2012 – Register here London, Thursday 10 th May 2012 – Register here London, Thursday 17 th May 2012 – Register here Birmingham, Monday 21 st May 2012 – Register here and possibly with a couple of more dates to be added in Manchester and Edinburgh if these events work out and are well attended. You can...(read more)

Background Downloads in a Windows 8 Metro style app

mtaulty — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:56:59 GMT

It’s common for an application to want to download (or upload) content from the internet possibly with a view to caching that content so that a user doesn’t have to wait to access it in the future. Internet Explorer is a prime example of this where I’m browsing the web and I download some videos and documents and zip files and so on and store them on my hard-drive. When I start a download, I select a file for the downloaded content and then while the download is on-going, I can continue to browse...(read more)

Simple Windows 8 Metro style ‘Maps App’

mtaulty — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 08:04:13 GMT

A few months ago, I wrote the beginnings of a Windows 8 Metro style application that hosted the Bing Maps AJAX control and put a little functionality around it. At a recent event, an attendee was asking me about this kind of technique and so I thought I’d dust off that sample (albeit unfinished) and publish it here for people to play with if it helps them out in any way. At the time, this sample was mostly about me experimenting with using script from the web which, in a Metro style app you would...(read more)

Windows 8 Metro Style Apps–Process Lifecycle Management

mtaulty — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 23:51:54 GMT

One of the major differences in building a Windows 8 Metro style application over a Windows desktop application is when and how the application gets to run. There’s a really good post just gone to the Windows 8 App Developer Blog today on this very topic; Managing app lifecycle so your apps feel always alive which every prospective Windows 8 Metro style app developer should read at least twice before beginning their app development – it’s one of those where the investment will pay off in the long...(read more)

WinJS Promises #6

mtaulty — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 23:13:43 GMT

I made a few short screencasts about promises in WinJS for Windows 8 Metro style apps. I know that promises are implemented in a bunch of frameworks but they were new to me and I spent a bit of time trying to figure them out as best I could and, generally, I’m very impressed. It’s a powerful and natural way to work with async code although I’d kill for a shorter way to write an anonymous function in JavaScript ( maybe this will help? ) In the .NET world there’s the analogous C# 5 way of handling...(read more)

WinJS Promises #5

mtaulty — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 23:11:21 GMT

WinJS Promises #4

mtaulty — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 23:08:53 GMT

WinJS Promises #3

mtaulty — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 23:06:27 GMT

WinJS Promises #2

mtaulty — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 23:04:07 GMT

WinJS Promises #1

mtaulty — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 23:02:02 GMT

Windows 8 Metro style simple music app example

mtaulty — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 08:19:00 GMT

It was a long weekend here in the UK and it rained a little and so I had a bit of spare time to put together a make-it-up-as-you-go-along screencasts around a simplistic Windows 8 metro style app that lets me play music from albums found in my music library. I chose to do this in HTML and JavaScript. As always, I’m not suggesting this is “perfect” or “correct” but I thought it might be useful and along the way it touches on some topics like; using a query against the local storage to get a view of...(read more)