Visual Studio Windows Phone 8 Tutorials - windows-phone-8

Where can i find some nice tutorials on developing apps that target windows phone apps specifically?
I want to take advantage of direct x.
Is Developing Windows phone apps remotely the same as developing a windows application?
Ima newb but i just read an entire c++ book.
I am currently in Asia, And can not google at the moment :D

You could find great tutorials at http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/
and developing apps for widows phone is quiet the same but you've gotta learn a few new class since WP and windows don't fully share the WinRT Core. You can develop apps using C++ but i would recommend to go for C# because it is far flexible that C++ and getting help is easy...

Related

Differences between Universal Windows Platform (Win10) and Windows Phone programming?

I would like to start programming for the Universal Windows Platform with an universal app running on Win10 desktops, tablets and phones.
I'm new to programming mobile Windows applications, so I have to learn some basics. I have some experience in Java/Android programming and basic skills in C#.
My problem now is that there aren't much tutorials for UWP app development which teach from the beginning how to program such an app. What I find are some tutorials for Windows phone 8 app development.
Are the differences too big or would you recommend to go through Windows phone 8 tutorials to get into the app for Windows topic?
UWP tutorials are sparse and hard to find, it's true. The difference isn't "Big" if you're doing a basic app, but once you start getting into any sort of mid-level apps then yes it diverges from the W8/WP8 paradigm.
One thing you can do is use the Windows App Studio, and create a generic app with an RSS feed, youtube videos or whatever, and download that solution and then look through the code that is automatically generated. I found a few good sources too:
Windows Dev center is also a huge help with example code (on GitHub) and the MSDN has examples as well, if you filter through it properly.
Channel 9 has an absolute beginners tutorial series from nothing to a superhero app.
https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Windows-10-development-for-absolute-beginners
I also found a good youtube series that covers individual topics instead of a real tutorial series for learning to program apps:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaoF-xhnnrRUNVx-JAfEy_kUrGGaKS7HL

Should I target WP8 users while developing new app?

We are planing to develop new app .It has VoIP feature and app is similar to whatsapp.
Since the app has Voip feature we have to go with WP8 silver light. Winrt for WP is not supporting VOIP api.
Can we guess almost all the WP8 devices are upgraded to WP8.1 ? If there are large user base still remains in WP8 we will develop the app using WP8 api's (Using VS2012). Otherwise we will go with WP8.1 api's (using VS2013).I heard there are few performance improvements and controls are available in WP8.1
Any suggestions on this ?
Thanks in advance
All Lumia phones can be updated to WP8.1 and a huge part of users so did.
Just an article for reference: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/02/nokia-lumia-windows-phone-8-1-update/
On my apps I use analytics to track users and I hardly see few users stuck with WP8.
Update - market share
http://www.gsmarena.com/adduplex_wp81_market_share_surpasses_wp80-news-10062.php
This article is from last October, WP8.1 has been out for about 5 months and it had already surpassed WP8. I let you think the actual quota...
Should you go with WinRT? It depends on your needs. Of course you should use at least WP8.1 Silveright (not WP8). But if your application does not require specific functions only available in WinRT, you might go with WP8.1 Silverlight, since WinRT has still many little performance issues.
There are a lot of new available APIs and features either for WP 8.1 Silverlight or WinRT. I would definitely target 8.1. Users still using WP 8.0 probably don't care that much about apps anyway.

QR Scan in Windows phone 8.1 based on WinRT

In a wp project development includes QR Scan module. I was surfing for some sources regarding this, Some article says that it won't supported in wp 8.1 winrt. Some says a third party tool can achieve but still there are some issues with that. So I request to guide a best approach for this.
Thanks in advance.

Universal App (WP & WinRT) should i use Cirrious MvvmCross or Galasoft MVVM Light Toolkit

I would like your input, so that i can make a good decision on whether I should use Cirrious MvvmCross or Galasoft MVVM Light Toolkit?
I am going to be developing 2 applications using Universal Apps (Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1) in XAML/C#. I am not new to developing windows phone and windows 8 apps however i am new to developing MVVM apps and thus would greatly appreciate you into in this?
Should i use Cirrious MvvmCross or Galasoft MVVM Light Toolkit, (should I use something else) what are their strengths and weakness?
Thank you for your time and your help!
Is there an added benefit for using MVVMCross in your app? Will you be developing an Android or IOS APP? If the answer no, then there is no need for MVVMCross or such. The new WinRT API should have 95% of what your app needs. You can add a portable class library to the solution and share third party libraries between the apps as well.
Good Luck.
MvvmCross is the best way to cross-platform work with xamarin for exemple but you can work with it just for create windows and windows phone app.
MvvmLight is really good to implement mvvm pattern in your project.
Just for create ms app, you should work with mvvm light.
MvvmLight does not have support for iOS yet. Support for Android was added in version 4.0 in May 2014. More info here : http://blog.galasoft.ch/posts/2014/05/mvvm-light-v4-4-with-xamarin-android-support/
MvvmCross does not support Universal Apps (yet).
More info here :https://github.com/MvvmCross/MvvmCross/issues/656
A ray of hope here : http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/developers/articles/week05jun14/mvvmcross-support-for-universal-apps
Looks like you have two options -
MvvmCross allows you to share code with Windows Phone and Windows 8 also. Just not via Universal App project. If the objective is to share code - you can go with MvvmCross. You wil get your WinPhone and WinStore apps along with Android and iOS also.
Start with Mvvmlight on Universal App and hope for Xamarin.iOS support soon.
http://blog.galasoft.ch/posts/2014/04/building-a-universal-application-for-windows-phone-8-1-and-windows-8-1-with-mvvm-light/

Windows phone 7 and HTML5

I'm completely new to Windows Phone and the Windows galaxy in general as far as programming goes. For a project of a phone app that has to run on a windows phone, I started exploring the resources and I have some questions.
One of the problems I encountered is that things change very quickly. For example, answers to this question say that browsers in Windows Phone will most likely not support HTML5. However, there are many online tutorials (for instance here) introducing ASP.NET MVC 4 and how it is appropriate for mobile apps.
I would personally like to go the "HTML5+javascript" way instead of learning how to develop with Silverlight, which apparently has been discontinued by Microsoft. However, my first concern is evidently to be able to create an application that works!
So with that in mind, my questions are the following:
My impression is that HTML5+JS is being introduced in replacement of Silverlight and will be more used in the future. Is that correct?
Knowing that I have to build an app which should be able to play videos and audio, record audio, and connect to a library to do some speech processing in the background, should I use Silverlight or can I try using ASP.NET MVC 4? (From what I gather, Silverlight would be better than XNA)
Are there limitations to using HTML5+JS as compared to Silverlight or the other way around?
Can you package a web app (i.e. using HTML5+JS) to be used locally on the phone if there is no access to a distant server?
Any specific pointers or answers on these specific issues will be more than welcome! :)
Currently, Windows Phone 7.1 does not support full HTML5+JS as a replacement for Silverlight. In Windows 8 (NOT the next version of windows phone, but the next version of Microsoft's desktop OS), HTML5+JS is presented as an alternative to using XAML and C# (it's a little confusing because on Windows 8, "metro" apps do not run Silverlight, but they still operate using XAML and C#). But that's neither here nor there... To summarily answer your question(s): In the phone's browser, there is very limited HTML5 capability.
From what you've described, you definitely want to use Silverlight for your Windows Phone app. The answer to that part of your question has never changed, Silverlight from the beginning of WP7 would be your best option. XNA is exclusively designed for gaming development.
To answer all of your questions, point by point:
My impression is that HTML5+JS is being introduced in replacement of
Silverlight and will be more used in the future. Is that correct?
This has not been confirmed (as of this post), but speculation is that this will be the case in some future release of the OS (no word on when that may be). But no, this is not currently an option, and there is no promise from Microsoft that it ever will be.
Knowing that I have to build an app which should be able to play
videos and audio, record audio, and connect to a library to do some
speech processing in the background, should I use Silverlight or can I
try using ASP.NET MVC 4? (From what I gather, Silverlight would be
better than XNA)
Silverlight. Silverlight. Silverlight. :) ASP.NET + MVC will not work. XNA is intended to be used for building games. Attempting to build more standard user interfaces using it would give you a migraine to say the least, and would not look anywhere near good.
Are there limitations to using HTML5+JS as compared to Silverlight or the other way around?
and
Can you package a web app (i.e. using HTML5+JS) to be used locally on the phone if there is > no access to a distant server?
As answered above, there is no way to do this on the phone.
As for pointers on all of this. I strongly encourage you to simply google (or bing if you're into that kind of thing) "getting started with windows phone" or "windows phone tutorials". Best source I could point you to is the Windows Phone Developer website. It's got some great tutorials that don't assume you know lots about windows phone. Best to get this material from Microsoft. It'll be more reliable, more well written, and ultimatly more useful. I've been writing Windows Phone apps since before the phone was released, and I still use it for learning the basics of something new. Great place.