WP7 development open sourced!

Quick post

I’ve posted the code of TrafficCamsFlanders & WOL on codeplex 🙂

http://trafficcamsflanders.codeplex.com/
http://wolwp7.codeplex.com/

No idea if anyone would ever use it…
But there it is! 🙂

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Mendel’s wp7 apps :-)

I’m happy about them!

And guess what, apparently 2856 other persons on this world are as well ^^
(probably a lot less, ‘cause of idiot’s downloading random apps without reading a description…)

Remember them?

• WOL
• TrafficCamsFlanders
• and even the more lame PrefabSMS ^^

According to microsoft’s statistics they have been downloaded as much as 2856 times =)

I don’t think they’re features somewhere big… But at least they’re mentioned in Johan Peeters‘ Belgian Apps list 🙂

Bugfixing @ wp7

Apparently, when you create a live tile, and you use an external URI to point to an image for the tile, the operating system removes the tile after a reboot…
This behaviour doesn’t occur when you use a local resource to instantiate the tile…

Just something you don’t actually know until you see it happening ^^

More programming

I’ve been programming again!
This time on soms apps called “PrefabSMS” and “WOL”.
More info about the app later, but now I just want to share some code snippets about sockets en live tiles!

UDP sockets

Sockets is something introduced since WP7.5’s update mango.
Something that should have been there since the beginngin… But hey, it’s here now, so enjoy it from now on!
Anyway, a first thing to do is include the namespace.

using System.Net.Sockets;

After that we can declare some new things 🙂

Socket _socket = null;
static ManualResetEvent _clientDone = new ManualResetEvent(false);
const int TIMEOUT_MILLISECONDS = 5000;
const int MAX_BUFFER_SIZE = 2048;

Which meaning is all pretty obvious I think…

After this the socket is initialized with

_socket = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork, SocketType.Dgram, ProtocolType.Udp);

The 3rd thing we need is a send() function.
This should be something as follows:

public string Send(byte[] payload))
{
     string response = "Operation Timeout";

     if (_socket != null)
     {
          SocketAsyncEventArgs socketEventArg = new SocketAsyncEventArgs();
          socketEventArg.RemoteEndPoint = new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Broadcast, 11000);
          socketEventArg.Completed += new EventHandler(delegate(object s, SocketAsyncEventArgs e)
          {
          response = e.SocketError.ToString();
          _clientDone.Set();
          });
          socketEventArg.SetBuffer(payload, 0, payload.Length);
          _clientDone.Reset();
          _socket.SendToAsync(socketEventArg);
          _clientDone.WaitOne(TIMEOUT_MILLISECONDS);
     }
     else
     {
          response = "Socket is not initialized";
     }

     return response;
}

So, after initialisation, you can call send to send your byte array into the wild!

You can change the IPEndPoint in the send function into IPEndPoint(“192.168.1.100”, 80) or something else, just an ip address and a port for the packet! 🙂

Live tiles

I’ve also been playing with the live tiles. In mango you can setup live tiles to enter a deep state of your application. With this you can open a specific page with specific data in your application instead of just “regularly” opening your app…

Add following reference.

using Microsoft.Phone.Shell;

Creation

StandardTileData NewTileData = new StandardTileData
{
     BackgroundImage = new Uri("ftgxmessage.png", UriKind.Relative),
     Title = temp.sendBody,
     BackTitle = temp.sendTo,
     BackContent = temp.sendBody,
     //BackBackgroundImage = new Uri("Blue.jpg", UriKind.Relative) 
};
ShellTile.Create(new Uri("/MainPage.xaml?action="+listBox1.SelectedIndex, UriKind.Relative), NewTileData);

This piece of code instantiates a standard tile with some info. Notice: you have a front and a back of the live tile (it flips around on the home screen 🙂 )

And the create() puts it on the homescreen.

An action can be included in the create function: here we call mainpage with a specified action to execute, this is done by a QueryString – see further.
Adjust at your own needs 🙂

At the page data can be passed from the tile into the app (this is done by a so called QueryString). This can be accessed in the Loaded function for the program with following code:

int id = Convert.ToInt32(NavigationContext.QueryString["action"]);

Et voila, you have your action variable at hand! 🙂

Deletion

When you want to delete a tile, you first have to find your tile 😛

If we put the tile from above on the homescreen, it can be identified with the action variable in the QueryString. So we use this to find our tile and identify it. And to delete it 🙂

string tempstring = "action=" + listBox1.SelectedIndex;
ShellTile TileToFind = ShellTile.ActiveTiles.FirstOrDefault(x => x.NavigationUri.ToString().Contains(tempstring));

That’s all for today 🙂

Grrr, Microsoft :P

Allright, 1 app passed certification and can be found in the marketplace: RegularDommel. (It’s just a bandwidth meter for your dommel account)

But it’s a start! =)

On the other hand, MobileVikingsReloader still fails certification…
Main reason is the following…

So what this app does is sending an sms towards the phone number of mobile vikings, just to let you know you want a top-up (also see MV’s faq)

Apparently I cannot “promote” other voice plans… Trying to get around this… Any suggestions?

 

 

WP7 – Some remarks

Nice things:

• speed, the entire OS is sooo fast ❤
• browser, which is a pretty decent one
• it IS easy to create apps, love c#!
• some (quality) apps & games
• fancy effects 8)
• it works, hasn’t crashed yet! 18 days uptime
• wonderful synchronisation with hotmail & live services

WP7 is a leap forward, but there is always a lot of comment and missing things.
Know your weaknesses!

• decent copy paste, when you paste something it is of your clipboard. Gone, ciao, weg, verschwunden… Keep it there until I overwrite it, please!
• decent messenger/skype/fim => in upcoming mango update due to lack of sockets in current build
• wake on lan => same reason
• no file transfer over bluetooth? wtf?
• not saving of the camera options, “it’s not a bug – it’s a feature” my *ss… 😀
• when you unlock the phone by pressing the camera button a couple of seconds, and it’s back to menu, it’s basically completely unlocked… Had this once in my pocket… So let the device check whether it’s unlocked by camera or by unlock screen. And if it was the camera-button that unlocked it, don’t let it return to the menu 😉
• regular backup possibilities (like the backup made after the nodo-update, but regular 😆 )
• save files with unknown extensions? come on! can’t even save pdf documents or random extensions 😛
• file browser – thx homebrew apps for fixing this 😎
• registery editor – same

Now, a couple of the mentions above are going to be solved in the upcoming “mango”-update. So let’s hope it becomes available quickly 😎 (September?  😕 )

Another suggestion:

• shortcuts of, perhaps, 4 most used apps?! 🙂
  

WP App Hub account via DreamSpark

One of the best initiatives Microsoft has created for us, poor students, is the platform called DreamSpark https://www.dreamspark.com

For the people that are not familiar with it: it offers a lot of ide’s and tools, and even some full featured os’ses so you can start develop within a couple of hours, read: visual studio, windows server, sql server, windows embedded, etc… And all of this is for free if you are a student. NIIIIICE 😎

Anyway, when you want to develop something for Windows Phone, you get the emulator. But eventually, you want to test your app on a real world device (at least, I want that 😀 ).
The privilege of placing your app in the appstore, and thus being able to test this on a physical device, is reserved for developers who pay $99… And for students, when you register via DreamSpark… NIIICE again! 😎

Because you are getting a spot in the marketplace for free, you have to be authenticated. This authentication process is done by geotrust, a third party doing Microsoft’s work 😛

The process exisits out of 3 steps

1. creating an application in visual studio and debugging using the emulator
2. uploading your app to the app hub
3. getting authenticated by geotrust

And you’re ready to go 😎

Currently, I  passed the authentication process from geotrust by scanning my Belgian ID and e-mailing this towards geotrust. (A couple of stupid errors came trough, like for example “mendel alias” is not my real name of-course… 😀 , but the guys are geotrust where wonderful, thx again if you’re reading this!)

So, from now on, I’m an official WindowsPhone developer! Lol ^^

First app in the marketplace (still needs to be approved) is a check tool (like for example the mobilevikings tool) for the download statistics of my ISP: Dommel.

We’ll see how everything turns out in the future 😎