Windows phone 8 Performance progressbar - windows-phone-8

Do i need to use performance progressbar in windows phone 8. In my windows phone 7/7.5 application i was used the progressbar shipped with the toolkit(performance progressbar). Is it necessary to use the same in windows phone 8 or simple progress bar is sufficient?

The WP8 SDK contains the improved progress bar now. So use this one only.
The TK version in not working properly anymore on WP8.
See changes for the SDK here, including a sentence about the progress bar:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj206940%28v=vs.105%29.aspx
See a discussion about that topic here:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-GB/wpdevelop/thread/dd457734-a11a-48e2-8443-ba8f5e3f67ac

Use the WP8 SDK's progress bar, but don't forget to set IsIndeterminate = false after collapsing the progressbar. It will run in the background & use battery & UI thread cycles even though its collapsed! :(

I think you should use something like this when targeting WP7 and WP8 with linked files:
#if WP8
public class MyPerformanceProgressBar : ProgressBar
{
}
#else
public class MyPerformanceProgressBar : Microsoft.Phone.Controls.PerformanceProgressBar
{
}
#endif
and use the class MyPerformanceProgressBar in your XAML code (which is linked in WP7 and WP8 project).

Related

How to show a floating message in windows phone (Android Toasts)

How can I implement the behaviour of an Android Toast, that is, a floating message that is auto dismissed after some seconds without requiring a user interaction?
Thanks
In Windows Phone there are toasts available. They can be showed on demand or be scheduled. They are shown at the top of the screen and dissapear after a while. A sample toast showed on demand can look like this:
ToastTemplateType toastTemplate = ToastTemplateType.ToastText02;
XmlDocument toastXml = ToastNotificationManager.GetTemplateContent(toastTemplate);
XmlNodeList textElements = toastXml.GetElementsByTagName("text");
textElements[0].AppendChild(toastXml.CreateTextNode("MyApp"));
textElements[1].AppendChild(toastXml.CreateTextNode("Message"));
ToastNotificationManager.CreateToastNotifier().Show(new ToastNotification(toastXml));
You will find more information at MSDN.
NOTE that the code above is for WP8.1 RunTime and Universal apps. If you are looking for Silverlight example, take a look st ShellToast and tutorial at MSDN.

Moving Native Window in AS3

How to move native window when any display object start drag in Flash action script? As we do with clock gadget in windows 7.
Actually, I am trying to make my custom clock that will work like a clock in windows 7.
If you are targeting Air, then use stage.nativeWindow.startMove(); like so:
private function dragWindow(e:MouseEvent):void
{
stage.nativeWindow.startMove();
}
clock.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, dragWindow);

ChartboostX not loading more apps

I am using this wrapper someone recommended for my iOS cocos2dx game link. It works when I call the showInterstitial() method, but when I try to use the showMoreApps the dialog appears for a split second and then disappears.
In my AppDelegate::applicationDidFinishLaunching() I do this
ChartboostX::sharedChartboostX()->setAppId("REDACTED");
ChartboostX::sharedChartboostX()->setAppSignature("REDACTED");
ChartboostX::sharedChartboostX()->startSession();
ChartboostX::sharedChartboostX()->cacheMoreApps();
And then when I want to call the showMoreApps I do this
ChartboostX::sharedChartboostX()->showMoreApps();
Have a look at my wrapper for Chartboost. It has been updated to use the latest version of the Chartboost SDK and works perfectly in my cocos2D-x game. I have not finished the android documentation yet but you can probably work it out yourself if you need to. The documentation for iOS is almost finished and quite easy to follow.(FYI the class ADELLE is the chartboost delegate and is an objective C++ class so you can use C++ in it as you normally would mixed in with the objective C. This is the same for AdWrapper.mm)
Check it out and see if it works for you.
https://github.com/Lochlanna/Chartboost-Cocos2D-x

How does one implement pull-to-refresh with a LongListSelector in Windows Phone 8?

I am writing a new WP8 app using the off-the-shelf LongListSelector that is shipped in the Microsoft.Phone.Controls assembly. Can anyone provide a code example that implements pull-to-refresh, originally made popular by Tweetie for iPhone and now common on iOS and Android? The existing examples use non-standard controls and I'd like to maintain my use of LongListSelector in WP8.
EDIT
I have found a good answer on StackOverflow describing the Twitter sample and how to do this in more detail:
Continuous Pagination with LongListSelector
You do not.
Pull-to-refresh is not a standard Windows Phone interaction, and you therefore should not implement it.
No native/first-party Windows Phone application use this functionality, and almost no third-party application does either. There is a reason for that.
To refresh the content of a page (or in your case, a LongListSelector), you should use a refresh ApplicationBacIconButton, just like in the Mail app. That's the standard and preferred way to manage refreshes.
Windows Phone is not Android, nor is it iOS. Keep that in mind when designing an application for it.
It is not a zoo, there are rules.
Actually, I just discovered a project uploaded to the Windows Phone Dev Center on November 30, 2012 that implements "infinite scrolling" using Twitter Search and Windows Phone 8 LongListSelector.
Download this project at: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wpapps/TwitterSearch-Windows-b7fc4e5e
If you really must do this (see answer by Miguel Rochefort) then details can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jasongin/archive/2011/04/13/pull-down-to-refresh-a-wp7-listbox-or-scrollviewer.aspx
Basically, the ScrollViewer has hidden/undocumented states that allow for detecting "compression" at the top or bottom of the list and you can use this to trigger the loading.
This is not completely trivial, but one way of doing it is to use GestureService
this.gestureListener = GestureService.GetGestureListener(containerPage);
this.gestureListener.DragStarted += gestureListener_DragStarted;
this.gestureListener.DragCompleted += gestureListener_DragCompleted;
this.gestureListener.DragDelta += gestureListener_DragDelta;
However, it has some bugs. For example, DragCompleted is not always raised, so you need to double-check for that using ManipulationCompleted event, which seems to be more reliable.
containerPage.ManipulationStarted += delegate { this.manipulationInProgress = true; };
containerPage.ManipulationCompleted += delegate
{
this.manipulationInProgress = false;
PerformDragComplete();
};
Another issue is that DragDelta occasionally reports bad coordinates. So you would need a fix like this:
Point refPosition = e.GetPosition(null);
if (refPosition.X == 0 && refPosition.Y == 0)
{
Tracer.WriteLine("Skipping buggy event");
return;
}
Finally, you can find if list is all the way at the top:
public double VerticalOffset
{
get
{
ViewportControl viewportControl = this.FindChildByName("ViewportControl") as ViewportControl;
if (viewportControl != null)
{
Tracer.WriteLine("ViewPort.Bounds.Top=" + viewportControl.Bounds.Top + " ViewPort.Top=" + viewportControl.Viewport.Top.ToString() + " State=" + this.ManipulationState);
return viewportControl.Bounds.Top - viewportControl.Viewport.Top;
}
return double.NaN;
}
}
You can check out the samples in
https://github.com/Kinnara/WPToolkit
it has an excellent implementation something called a ListView extension of the longllistselector control, that will really help you out.
and remember with longlistselector always try to load 20 items atleast. =)
As the WP8 LLS doesn't use a scrollviewer, I guess you will have to inspect the UI tree to get a hold on the viewport control and see what you can do with ViewportControl.Viewport property ...
Oh ... the twitter application is now using the pull to refresh interaction. I like the UI guidelines of the WP platform but rules, once mastered, are made to be broken ;)
This post here can give you hints on how to get the viewport control and retreive the scrolling offset. this scrolling offset must be of a particular value when the list is bouncing

How to change TTS Rate in Windows Phone 8

How do you change the speech rate in Windows Phone 8? I want to do something like this:
SpeechSynthesizer synth = new SpeechSynthesizer();
synth.Rate = -2;
However, there isn't a Rate property on SpeechSynthesizer like there is in .NET 4.5.
As you've noticed the TTS classes on WP8 do not support changing pitch, speed, emphasis, breaks or any other pronunciation related properties when using text-to-speech on strings.
If you want to have fine-grained control of speech in your app you should use TTS with SSML instead of plain strings. See a WP8 TTS SSML example here (3rd example in this section) # http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Wiki/What's_new_in_Windows_Phone_8#Speech:_Text-to-Speech
There's a few handy SSML simple examples here. One of these examples might be what you're looking for. Wrapping the contents of the <speak/> command with a "<prosody rate='+0.3'>speaking 30% faster.</prosody>" element might be the thing you need.