Can an app access and create a specific folder in the Windows phone 8 environment? I'm looking at building an audiobook player app and want to allow the user to drop these into an audiobook folder on the phones drive itself instead of mixing with the music folder. Could an app at least read from a specific folder outside its isolated storage?
Secondly, if so, is there any equivalent of the ".nomedia" file in Android that my app could insert into the folder to exclude the audiobook folder from being scanned by the music players on the phone?
I'm struggling to find the appropriate documentation that will answer my questions, as most documentation seems specific to WP7
RE: .nomedia file
Overall what you're asking for isn't supported and isn't complimentary to the zen of WP8. While I understand your need to create a unique music experience the WP8 media ecosystem is centered around the Music+Video hub and apps should work with it. Creating an experience like you were describing would just feel disjointed and jarring on WP8.
RE: letting users drag & drop files in file explorer
Some WP8 phones support having a Micro-SD card added to the phone. That uSD card can be accessed from File Explorer and WP8 apps can read files from it. The uSD card can have a folder called "Music" which would be used by the Music+Video app and invisible to 3rd party apps. However, your app can read any files that aren't in those uSD reserved folders. You can signup to file extensions but most media WP8 file extensions are reserved for 1st party experiences.
RE: Music Hub Integration
Please make sure to integrate your music player into the Music+Video hub otherwise it'll likely get downvoted to oblivion.
Related
I will attempt to be clear. Well, in the old web store of Windows Phone 8 before I could download manually any app or game, via the link: "Download and install manually" as you can see
in this image It is a feature that was lost with the arrival of the new store of Windows 10.
Ok. Now, in the following video Download and Install Apps (XAP/APPX Files) on WP8.1 via PC you can see at time t=53 sec, appears at bottom of page the link http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/vimeo/the App ID/xap?apptype=regular
After the user clicks on 'Download and install manually' a popup box appears. Now you can see inside the pop-up box that the downloading of the app is downloaded from: http://cdn.marketplacecontent.windowsphone.com
But in fact the complete address follows this format:
http://cdn.marketplacecontent.windowsphone.com/public/the App ID?downloadname=name of the app.type of file(xap, appx or appxbundle)
For example, this is the direction of the game Tentacles: Enter the Mind from the Microsoft CDN server:
http://cdn.marketplacecontent.windowsphone.com/public/8915ee7c-c55d-4e8f-a0b6-f80497e6f26e?downloadname=tentacles-enter-the-mind.xap
As you just seen, the old web store of Windows Phone 8 could download apps and games from the Microsoft CDN server. Even with the new store Windows 10 you can still download apps from Microsoft CDN. There are website that somehow can download apps and games from the Microsoft CDN server such as: www.appx4fun.com www.windowscommunity.in and www.winphonehub.org to mention some.
Based upon everything I said, you have any idea of how to I can access the Microsoft CDN server to download apps without resorting to third-party stores? I would like to know how they do it.
NOTE: All apps can be downloaded manually using this address:http://cdn.marketplacecontent.windowsphone.com/public/the App ID?downloadname=name of the app.type of file(xap, appx or appxbundle)but for it to work you need to know the ID of the app you want to download and the type of file. How can I find the ID of the app? Know the ID is a very important information!
Well, that's all. I hope your answer
Regards.
I am wondering if it is possible to create a master app or suite or container (not sure what to call it) to house multpile apps? I am working in Flash using as3 and packaging as air.
I am working on creating multiple apps for a company and they would like to have an app that when you click on it, all of the apps the person has downloaded from the company would appear inside of it. Keeping all of that companies apps on your device in one location, easy to find. For example, the kindle app. It is one app on your device that when you click on it, it opens up and displays all of the books you have chosen to download. You click the book you want and it opens up. Any ideas?
I don't want to package all of the apps together because I want the person to be able to choose which apps they want to download. I have no clue where to start on this one.
Sorry if my explanation is kind of confusing but I appreciate any help. Keep in mind I am fairly new at this stuff. Thank you!
If your idea is to target iOS then no, you can't. Because it's not allowed to load extra code from anywhere else but the app's own directory so you have to package everything into one app. Android may be a different story though.
I have an existing Android app project which has been already published on the Google Play, and now I would like to incorporate in my app the possibility to use the Google Drive possibilities in order to download *.jpg files directly to the sd card when the app is opened or load for the first time. Like this I liberate the internal memories of the phones where this app is installed (All the images are stored in the resources of the app actually which is >~ 20MB). I have read a lot of forums concerning the Google Drive SDK or API subjects and I can say that I'm a little bit lost on the manner to manage it for my present app. Some ideas or suggestions would be very very very appreciated.
Thank you very much).
Please see this question for the basics on how to integrate your Android app with Google Drive SDK: Access to Google Drive from self implemented Android application
In it, I reference a good Google+ tutorial on how to get started, and it's easy enough to take the concepts and apply them to an existing app. (That's how I did it too.) Before you get started, sign up for the Google APIs (https://code.google.com/apis/console/), get into the API Console, and turn on both the Google Drive API and Drive SDK. This'll make coding go a lot smoother. Let me know if you have any problems.
One addendum for your specific case relating to *.jpg files is you could set a MIME type for fetching strictly the pictures. It'd go something like this:
request = service.files().list(); // .setQ("mimeType=\"text/plain\"");
Unfortunately setQ is commented out because it would fail to return any results when I used it. However, you may have better luck with the image/jpeg MIME type.
I need some light on the matter of Chrome Webstore registration.
I'm still confused despite searching through the web: the "app" will be only private for the site (we're trying to develop a Elgg plugin for our website that will allow users to access their drives).
1) for testing, do I need to register it (I did a search but some say yes like in the Google Drive SDK documentation, some say no in the google-drive-sdk tags)?
2) when the plugin is finished, tested and ready to go live for our users, do I still need to register it and pay 5$?
Thanks you for the answer you can provide us.
You don't need to register your app on the Chrome Web Store if you don't want to integrate with the Google Drive web UI: having the option to create a new file or open a file with your app directly from Google Drive.
Also, it might be easier for you not to create a Chrome Web Store listing while developing.
If you do need to integrate with the Google Drive web UI, but don't want your app to be public, you can publish your app to Trusted Testers only.
I have a desktop app which creates files under c:\ProgramData folder on windows 7. (I can't move the files location to document folder.) I want to provide a metro version of this application as well. The metro application should be able to read and write the same files which are created by the desktop version. As I see, metro does not allow this in some obvious way. Is there a way to make that folder available to metro app?
Metro applications can't access most of the windows desktop folders. C:\ProgramData is not one of the allowed locations. See here for a list of the allowed locations and how to get to them.
You can add possibility to 'send' your data to your desktop app from WinRT app. Try to use sharing contract (check there and there ) for this. I understand that isn't well solution for this but it is better than nothing.
EDIT: This way isn't possible. I've just checked and get message - Nothing can be shared from desktop.