Windows Phone 8 Development Internals by Whitechapel, Andrew -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Windows Phone 8 Development Internals Dedication A Note Regarding Supplemental Files Foreword Introduction

Who should read this book

Assumptions

Who should not read this book Organization of this book Conventions and features in this book System requirements Code samples

Installing the code samples Using the code samples

Acknowledgments Errata & book support We want to hear from you Stay in touch

I. Core Features

1. Vision and architecture

A different kind of phone

The user interface

Light and simple Typography Motion Content, not chrome Honesty in design

The role of apps

Windows phone architecture

Platform stack App types Background processing

Background OS services

Background transfer service Alarms

Background audio agents Scheduled tasks Continuous background execution for location tracking

Security model Windows and Windows Phone: together at last

Shared core Windows Runtime

Building and delivering apps

Developer tools

Windows Phone emulator system requirements Building for Windows Phone 7.x and 8.x

App delivery

Getting started with “Hello World”

Creating a project Understanding the project structure Greeting the world from Windows Phone Deploying to a Windows Phone device The Windows Phone Toolkit

Summary

2. App model and navigation

The app lifecycle

Normal termination App deactivated—fast app resume App deactivated—the tombstone case Setting a resume policy Obscured and Unobscured

The page model

Page creation order

Navigation and state

App state Page state Cancelling navigation Backstack management

Navigation options

Using NavigateUri Pages in separate assemblies Fragment and QueryString The NavigationMode and IsNavigationInitiator properties Re-routing navigation and URI mappers

File type and URI associations

Starting an app based on a file or URI Acting as a file type or URI handler

Manifest registration Handling activation Accessing launched files

Summary

3. UI visuals and touch

Phone UI elements

Standard UI elements The visual tree Screen layout

Working with UserControls vs. custom controls Re-templating controls Resources

Data resources XAML resources and resource dictionaries

Implicit styles Dependency and attached properties

Dependency properties Attached properties

The app bar and notification area Transient panels Routed events Logical touch gestures Manipulation events Mouse events FrameReported events Keyboard input Summary

4. Data binding and MVVM

Simple data binding and INotifyPropertyChanged Data-binding collections

Dynamic data-bound collections Command binding Template resources Sorting and grouping bound collections

Type/value converters Element binding Data validation Separating concerns

The Model-View-ViewModel pattern The Visual Studio databound application project MVVM in Pivot apps Row filtering in Pivot apps Improving the Visual Studio Databound Application template

Summary

5. Phone and media services

Launchers and Choosers Search extensibility

App Connect App Instant Answer

Audio and video APIs Media playback

The MediaPlayerLauncher The MediaElement class The MediaStreamSource and ManagedMediaHelpers classes The MediaElement controls

Audio input and manipulation

The SoundEffect and SoundEffectInstance classes Audio input and the microphone The DynamicSoundEffectInstance class

Music and Videos Hub The Clipboard API Summary

6. Sensors

Orientation Phone hardware Sensor APIs The accelerometer

Reactive extensions The Level Starter Kit Shake

Compass Gyroscope Motion APIs Summary

7. Web connectivity

The WebClient and HttpWebRequest classes

Using the async pack Using the Task Parallel Library

The WebBrowser control

Local webpages Integrating with JavaScript

Live SDK

SkyDrive

Facebook Twitter The Data Sense feature Summary

8. Web services and the cloud

Web services

Localhost and the emulator Connecting to the web service SOAP vs. REST

WCF data services

Creating an OData client Filtered queries Dynamic query results Paging the data Caching the data JSON-formatted data

Web service security Windows Azure

Windows Azure web services Windows Azure Mobile Services for Windows Phone

Summary

9. Background agents

Background tasks Alarms and reminders

Alarms Reminders

The Background Transfer Service Generic Background Agents

GBA components Updating tiles The lock-screen background Lock-screen notifications

Background audio

Background audio application Background audio agent

Summary

10. Local storage and databases

Local storage

Isolated storage APIs

Isolated storage settings Isolated storage files

Windows Runtime storage Win32 APIs

LINQ-to-SQL

Defining the database in code Performing queries Create/update/delete Associations Handling schema changes Prepopulating a reference database Maximizing LINQ-to-SQL performance

Minimizing memory usage Speeding up batch updates

SQLite

Acquiring SQLite for Windows Phone Using SQLite from managed code

Summary

II. Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8

11. App publication

Preparing for publication The publication process Dev Center reports Updates Beta testing Versions Selective targeting

Device capabilities Device memory

Summary

12. Profiling and diagnostics

Debugging

Targeting different device configurations Troubleshooting app startup Using Fiddler with the Windows Phone emulator

Testing

Unit testing Simulating real-world conditions Testing tombstoning The Windows Phone emulator

Emulator keyboard shortcuts Emulator vs. device

Profiling

Frame rate counters Redraw regions DeviceStatus Memory APIs The Windows Phone Performance Analysis Tool

The app analysis report Memory analysis report

Profiling native code

Performance best practices

Keep the user engaged Stay off of the UI thread Simplify the visual tree Easy wins with photos Use LongListSelector instead of ListBox for large collections Use panorama thoughtfully

Summary

13. Porting to Windows Phone 8 and multitargeting

Lighting up a Windows Phone 7 App with Windows Phone 8 features

Creating Windows Phone 8 tiles in a Windows Phone 7 App

Registering for the tiles AppExtra Checking the OS version Upgrading existing tiles Adding new tiles Simulating OS upgrade and App update

Quirks mode and breaking changes

Quirks mode Breaking changes Use of MessageBox during app lifecycle events

Anonymous user ID FM radio Photo apps picker LayoutUpdated timing The WebBrowser control

General rendering and scrolling User agent string

Text input events Slider control XML serialization The LongListSelector control Read-only database connections in local storage

Managing platform-specific projects

Create distinct apps for Windows Phone 7.1 and Windows Phone 8 Share a Windows Phone 7.1 library Link source code files Create abstract base classes and partial classes

Windows Phone 7.8 SDK Test coverage for Windows Phone 7.x apps Summary

14. Tiles and notifications

Tile sizes and templates Secondary tiles

Pinning tiles Cross-targeting Windows Phone 7

Push notifications Push notification server Push notification client Registration web service Additional server features

Batching intervals XML payload Response information

Additional client features

The ErrorOccurred event User opt-in/out Implementing a push viewmodel

Push notification security Summary

15. Contacts and calendar

Contacts

Understanding the People Hub Querying device contacts

Single-contact choosers Querying contacts programmatically

Adding contact information Creating a custom contacts store

Calendar

Querying the calendar Creating a new appointment

Summary

16. Camera and photos

Acquiring a single photo Working with the media library

Reading photos Adding new images

Capturing photos

The PhotoCamera class The PhotoCaptureDevice class (Windows Phone 8 only)

Preparing the device and capture sequence Manipulating the preview buffer Capturing a photo Capturing video

Extending the Photos Hub

Apps pivot The photo apps picker and photo edit picker

The photo apps picker (Windows Phone 7.1 only) The photo edit picker (Windows Phone 8 only)

Lenses

Launching from the camera Rich media editing

Sharing photos

Share picker Auto-upload

Summary

17. Networking and proximity

Sockets

The Windows Runtime sockets API .NET sockets The WinSock API

Finding your app on nearby devices

Finding peers through Bluetooth Finding peers through tap-to-connect Reconnecting without retapping Tap-to-connect with a Windows 8 app

Connecting to other Bluetooth devices NFC

Reading and writing NFC tags Writing URIs to tags Writing NDEF messages directly Writing a LaunchApp tag Sending a URI across devices

Summary

18. Location and maps

Architecture Determining the current location (Windows Phone 7) Bing maps (Windows Phone 7)

The Bing Map control Bing maps web services Bing Maps Launchers

Getting location (Windows Phone 8) Maps API (Windows Phone 8)

The Map control Route and directions Maps Launchers

Continuous background execution (Windows Phone 8) Testing location in the simulator Location best practices Summary

III. New Windows Phone 8 Features

19. Speech

Voice commands

The GSE Building a simple voice commands App

Registering voice commands Initializing the VCD file Handling invocation for simple voice commands

Adding flexibility by using labels Updating PhraseLists at run time

Speech recognition in apps

Simple recognition with built-in UX Customizing the recognizer UI Adding custom grammars

Adding predefined grammars Adding simple lists Adding grammars by using speech recognition grammar specification

Text-to-Speech

Simple TTS with SpeakTextAsync Taking control with speech synthesis markup language

Crafting the speech output Keeping speech and screen in sync

Putting it together to talk to your apps Summary

20. The Wallet

Understanding the Wallet

The Wallet and Near Field Communication The Wallet Hub

The Wallet object model

Managing deals Transaction items

Adding and removing the account in the app Handling the addition and removal of accounts in the Wallet

Payment instruments

Wallet agents Summary

21. Monetizing your app

Advertising

Integrating the Ad Control Ad Control design guidelines

Positioning Integration with panorama and pivot controls Creating a common Ad Unit across all pages

Registering with Microsoft pubCenter

Trial mode In-app purchase

Division of responsibilities Types of IAP content Configuring the mock IAP library Purchasing durable content Purchasing consumable content Configuring IAP inventory

Summary

22. Enterprise apps

Windows Phone for business Managed vs. unmanaged phones

MDM and managed phones Managed enrollment

Unmanaged phones

Unmanaged enrollment

Company Apps Building a company hub app Summary

IV. Native Development and Windows Phone 8 convergence

23. Native development

Native code overview

When to use native code

Portability Reusability Performance

An introduction to modern C++

Smart pointers

Unique pointers Shared Pointers Type Inference

Foreach loops Lambdas Scoped, strongly typed enums What about properties and events?

Managed-native interop

Creating the Windows Runtime component Consuming the Windows Runtime component from C# Debugging mixed-mode projects

Writing asynchronous code in C++

Moving synchronous code to the background Providing progress updates Cancelling asynchronous operations

Using Windows Runtime classes in C++ Win32 API Component Object Model (COM)

Supported platform COM libraries Using custom COM libraries

Summary

24. Windows 8 convergence

Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 compared

Developer tools and supported languages Application models Frameworks

Windows Phone framework namespaces explained Windows Runtime API comparison Non-converged frameworks Direct3D

Background processing

Generic background processing Background audio Voice over IP Background location tracking

Authoring Windows Runtime components on Windows Phone

Sharing code between Windows and Windows Phone

Deciding when and how to share code Code sharing and Model-View-ViewModel Sharing .NET code by using the PCL

Creating the project Handling platform differences

Linked files and conditional compilation Sharing managed code with partial classes Sharing native code Sharing XAML-based UI with user controls

Dealing with built-in styles Taking the UserControl cross-platform Reusing phone UI in Windows snapped view

Summary

25. Games and Direct3D

Direct3D primer Direct3D differences on Windows Phone Visual Studio project types Direct3D and XAML projects Structure of the basic Direct3D app

The CoreApplication and CoreWindow classes Starter code classes Initializing Direct3D A brief word about the Component Object Model DirectX hardware feature levels Update and render

Minimal Direct3D app Touch input Direct2D and DirectXTK Summary

A. About the Authors Index About the Authors Copyright

← Prev
Back
Next →

← Prev
Back
Next →