Tag Archives: Windows Phone

Help make Microsoft developer technologies better!

Ron Jacobs just blogged about how .NET developers can provide feature feedback and vote on WCF/WF features.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rjacobs/archive/2011/04/14/how-you-can-make-wf-wcf-better.aspx

Many Microsoft product teams are doing this nowadays. It still surprises me how many .NET developers don’t realize these feature voting sites exist. In addition to WF/WCF, I am aware of these:

http://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/110705-app-platform

https://windowsphone7community.uservoice.com/forums/84435-feature-feedback

http://data.uservoice.com/forums/72027-wcf-data-services-feature-suggestions

http://data.uservoice.com/forums/72025-ado-net-entity-framework-ef-feature-suggestions

http://dotnet.uservoice.com/forums/40583-wpf-feature-suggestions

http://dotnet.uservoice.com/forums/4325-silverlight-feature-suggestions

http://dotnet.uservoice.com/forums/87171-visual-basic-content-requests

http://dotnet.uservoice.com/forums/57026-wcf-ria-services

http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/pages/34192-windows-azure-feature-voting

http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/35889-microsoft-codename-dallas-feature-voting

http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/44459-sql-azure-data-sync-feature-voting

http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/34685-sql-azure-feature-voting

http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/100417-sql-azure-reporting-feature-voting

http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/40626-windows-azure-appfabric-feature-voting

http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/103009-windows-azure-code-samples-voting

http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/103403-windows-azure-content-voting

http://aspnet.uservoice.com/forums/41199-general

http://aspnet.uservoice.com/forums/41201-asp-net-mvc

http://aspnet.uservoice.com/forums/41202-asp-net-webforms

http://aspnet.uservoice.com/forums/50615-orchard

http://aspnet.uservoice.com/forums/100405-performance

http://aspnet.uservoice.com/forums/41233-visual-studio-performance-feedback

Let me know in the comments if I’ve missed any. I’ll add them.

OQuery – A fluent API to build OData url queries sans LINQ

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Yesterday, I blogged about a solution to compose OData / WCF Data Service queries using LINQ for situations where LINQ enabled client libraries don’t exist (i.e. JavaScript and Windows Phone 7).

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/devkeydet/archive/2011/02/02/data-services-odata-client-for-windows-phone-7-and-linq.aspx

The post is all about using LINQPad as a tool to write your LINQ queries, then using the feature in LINQPad that gives you the url query translation. Well today, a new MSDN Code Callery project just popped up called OQuery that offers another approach that doesn’t require using an external tool such as LINQPad:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/oquery

Here’s the description from the project page:

“OQuery is a library which gives you a fluent style interface for building OData Url Fragments in javascript or C#.
Neither Javascript or Silverlight for WP7 support LINQ and so this library in those cases.”

What are you waiting for? Go check it out!

Data Services (OData) Client for Windows Phone 7 and LINQ

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The WCF Data Services Team released a client library to make it easier to interact with OData services from Windows Phone 7.

http://bit.ly/wp7odatalib

The major caveat (and bummer) with the library is that “LINQ support in the client library has been removed as the core support is not yet available on the phone platform.” I have a tip/trick for LINQ lovers like me that will allow you to still use LINQ query syntax to compose your query (kind/sorta). A tool I find useful to when writing OData queries on Windows Phone 7 is LINQPad. I use the tool to write LINQ queries against my data service, then get the url syntax query translated for me:

Once I get my LINQ query right, I just paste the http string into my app. I’m still surprised about how many people aren’t aware of LINQPad. You must check it out if you use LINQ in your day to day coding (which I am sure most of you do now). You can learn more about using LINQPad against OData services (amongst many other uses) from the product site:

http://www.linqpad.net/

NOTE: This tip/trick is very useful when querying OData services from JavaScript as well. Here are two helpful posts on using jQuery to interact with an OData service:

http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2010/04/01/netflix-jquery-jsonp-and-odata.aspx

http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2010/03/30/using-jquery-and-odata-to-insert-a-database-record.aspx

Hope this helps save you some time!

My first time being the interviewee

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I’ve interviewed customers over the years for Ch9, but this is the first time I was interviewed. Zhiming Xue (aka “Dr. Z”) interviewed me about my WP7 app. Check it out if you are interested:

https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/ARCast.TV/ARCastTV-Building-My-First-Windows-Phone-7-Application

Code Coverage for Silverlight and Windows Phone

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As part of building my WP7 app, I spent a fair amount of time trying to get code coverage working for my unit tests. I tried a number of different approaches including using the Silverlight Unit Test Framework and NUnit + dotCover. I finally landed on an approach that worked for me using the unit testing capabilities in Visual Studio 2010. Since this is a much confused topic with very little info on the web on how to successfully get working for Silverlight/Windows Phone apps, I published a screencast on the subject. I hope you find it useful.

Direct link:

https://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Code-Coverage-for-Silverlight-and-Windows-Phone-ViewModels

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_coverage:

"Code coverage is a measure used in software testing. It describes the degree to which the source code of a program has been tested."

In this screencast, you will learn how to get code coverage for your Silverlight and/or Windows Phone ViewModels through unit testing. You can learn more about code coverage in Visual Studio 2010 from:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd537628.aspx

SHAMELESS PLUG: My First WP7 Marketplace App

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UPDATE: A great majority of people never look at an app unless it is free. Even though the manual rate lookup feature of my app is free through trial mode and never times out, I decided to publish an identical version of the app with trial mode behavior called “Free Per Diem Rates” so the app is more discoverable to those who won’t bother looking at an app unless they see FREE.

I’ve been working on an app for Windows Phone 7 in my spare time. The app is for business travelers whose employer’s policy for travel expenses is based on US Government per diem rates. It’s been live in Marketplace for a couple weeks now, but I have been iteratively improving it. Here is the description from Marketplace:

Look up US Government per diem rates. The manual lookup functionality is FREE and works in trial mode without expiration. GSA rates are currently available in the application. DoD and State Department rates are coming soon. Paid users get the following features:

Look up rates using phone location
Look up rates using text search
Save found rates to favorites

App link: http://bit.ly/perdiemwp7

Free version: (no link yet…search for “Free Per Diem” in marketplace)

Here is a short video walkthrough of it running in the emulator:

First Published Government App for Windows Phone 7

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Pat, who is one of my teammates, just blogged about a project he’s been working on with Sunlight Labs. It’s an app called Congress for Windows Phone 7. Check it out:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/publicsector/archive/2010/10/17/introducing-the-first-public-sector-application-for-windows-phone-7.aspx

Windows Phone 7 and SharePoint 2010

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I always hesitate to publish a blog post that is just a link to someone else’s. However, sometimes you just want to make sure people know certain posts exists. This is one from Paul Stubbs (@PaulStubbs on twitter) qualifies:

Developing Windows Phone 7 Applications for SharePoint 2010 – http://bit.ly/bC0yi8