Wildcard sharing contracts in Windows 8 Metro - windows-runtime

I am wondering if it is possible to specify a wildcard sharing contract in Windows 8 metro. I would like to create an application that can receive every possible sharing request in Windows 8 (for debugging purposes), including custom streams from third party applications.

Yeah, you pretty easily could. Until it comes to the custom streams/data.
ShareOperation.Data contains a list of strings that the datapackage contains. You could loop through them and do with you wish with the data. You just wouldn't be able to easily do some kind of If/Switch logic, since if you get custom data, it won't come up in the StandardDataFormats.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/windows/apps/windows.applicationmodel.datatransfer.datapackageview.availableformats

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Can I make CNC Editor with HTML5?

I would like to make my own CNC Editor.
I am looking for some guidance. I don’t know if it is even possible with HTML5. But it would be great if I can. If possible, please list what I should research and learn.
I don’t need it to be online accessible, I will only have it on my computer. I will be accessing it via local network from multiple different computers. I don’t want it accessing the internet, because it’s not always available.
Desired Features:
⁃ Read and Write files with different extensions (all files used are easily opened in notepad)
⁃ Store and retrieve data from a simple database file.
⁃ Make calculations
⁃ Have a text Editor window
⁃ Have a Display area for simple vector graphics depending on data loaded and provided by user.
It is possible but requires a lot of work. I would say that these are technologies you would need to master in order to pull this off:
Node.js (use express.js) - for storing and retrieving files from database and for reading/writing local files with extensions you want (server-side)
Vue.js or Angular.js or React - for building frontend interface to manipulate your vector graphics. It can also do calculations and It's good with svgs and that kind of stuff.
Electron.js (not mandatory) - it wraps it in native-app like experience. This framework actually gives you ability to write desktop apps for any os and arch.
So as I said, It would be a lot of work but its possible in the end.
Funny coincidence is that my brother is planning to build CNC machine so I might be doing this as well in next couple of months. Feel free to contact me if you need any further help!
UPDATE: You cant do it with just HTML5. It would be like trying to make wooden space shuttle.

Find app uninstalltions in Windows Store

I have deployed an application to the Windows Store. Is there any way to find out how many of users have uninstalled the app?
The store does not get updated when an app is uninstalled, so you would instead need to consider some other way of measuring it with your analytics (for example, you might consider an app uninstalled if it is unused after thirty days for a given device id)
To achieve what Rowland Shaw proposed, you must manually implement some kind of telemetry in your app.
You can do it all by yourself by retrieving the Device ID via the appropriate API (a quick search on the web could help here) and later send that ID to your web service on a periodic basis.
Alternatively you can use third party frameworks, Application Insights, just to name one, but I don't know if it allows you to track a specific Device ID natively.

What is the best way to secure/link an Air Application to a specified system

I have to build (obviously using flex) an AIR application that must be linked to a given hardware (i.e. hard-disk), so it can't be copied elsewhere..
Usually using others languages, every time you open the application, a comparison between HardDisk or CPU ID and the value stored in the application itself...
Using Flex this is not possible (as far as I know)...
User/Password check obviously won't work..
I can't use a webservice, the application needs to work offline too..
How could I do?
With AIR you can integrate native apps - either indirectly (start a process and get its result) or directly (as a library).
Any of these techniques allow you to achieve your goal the same way you would in the case you described as "other languages"... BUT BEWARE: this makes your app platform-dependent AND can potentially lead to problems since it is prone to permissions issues etc.
Another point: no such technique is 100% secure (can be circumvented AND can lead to unsatisfied legitimate users!) - so you should really consider whether this is the way to go...

Is it exists any "rss hosting" with API for creating feeds

I am creating a desktop app that will create some reports. I want to export these reports as RSS or ATOM feeds. I can easily create feeds with Rome lib for Java. But I have no idea how to spread them. I thought about embedding httpd into my app, but it's bad idea, because a computer can be behind NAT or turned off.
I need some kind of "proxy" server, where can I push my feeds, and clients will be able to pull content from that server.
I can probable write server side app fore this, but first I'd like to find out if some dedicated solution is available for problems like this.
I was also thinking about using some blogging platform and using its API. What do you think about this approach?
One more thing I have to consider when choosing platform ability to handle lot of updates. Sometimes desktop app will be shut down but when it will be running, it generates quite a lot of updates.
Check out Google's feedburner.
EDIT
Here's a better link for their help / faq. You'll still need to use some service to generate your feed, but it won't have to handle a heavy load. Feedburner will poll your feed every 30 minutes and their servers will act as a proxy for your feed. As far as how to publish the feed for Feedburner to read, I would recommend writing a service to handle this, even more considering that you getting the data for the feeds from a number of desktop applications, and it'll probably be easier to write a custom service to interface with them, store your data in a DB, and publish feeds than it would be to try and modify a blogging service for this purpose.
I don't know why I didn't think of this when I first answered your question, but Yahoo has a service called Yahoo Pipes which allows you could use to generate feeds from various kinds of inputs. I'm not sure how well it would scale but it might work for you.

Adding text / input box rendering to Access for a guided user interface experience

For software used in a call centre guiding agents through a set script they must follow while on telephone calls, with the script branching dependant on answers to questions given - My system uses a MS Access / VBA front end (isnt web based due to speed, phone integration), 'call scripting' is coded in VBA when needed, but what if i want move to a more complete solution?
Is hosting a HTML/ms webbrowser control the obvious platform to build call scripting on?
A manager view will also be needed allowing managers to create scripts, divide it into parts, specify routing rules that determines the path through the script, link input boxes (ie question answers) back to database fields, specify validation rules as well.
Thinking about the complexities of building the manager view that translates the intended script into HTML/Javascript, is creating my own simple doc description language with tags for just the features i need and a 'rendering engine' in VBA a solution you might consider for this?
Ive thought about creating scripts out of standard Access controls, using relational table structure to hold the info of what controls relate to what parts of scripts, validation, routing options etc but i think due to Access' lack of runtime control creation this will be more painful than a rendering engine that takes a script written in my own doc desc language and displaying it.
What suggestions have you for the implementation of this?
The actual user interface requirements of the user-facing part of your system seem to be pretty minimal (ask question, get answer, branch to "next" question). I don't think there's any "obvious" platform to use. As always, a browser based system makes it easier for geographically scattered users to use a centralized system but will probably cost more in terms of development.
The manager-facing part of the application is more interesting and for that I'd probably suggest a desktop application rather than a browser based one. I can see this relying on a lot of drag-and-drop and line-drawing type functionality and that kind of stuff is still easier to do on the desktop, at least in my opinion.
Assuming that you can clearly define the kinds of question routing and decision points that a script has, and these decisions are relatively simple, I probably would write your own specification for how a survey is represented. The manager-facing application would create, edit, and save a specification and the user-facing application would read and step through one.
Given my personal skill set, I'd probably write both applications in Delphi, develop an XML format to represent the survey specification, and consider either XML or relational storage for the back end depending on what you actually wind up doing with the data.
I'm inclined to agree that a web interface is optimal for something like this, however WPF is a great alternative as well with many of the advantages of a web interface along with the power of a desktop application. Both web and WPF would give you considerable amount of control over how the application looks and feels, leveraged with all the power of the .NET framework. One drawback of a web app is that you have less ability to interact with the phone system directly, but I'm sure that's a problem that can be mitigated fairly easily with some AJAX. A big plus for the web platform option is that you'll have access to tons of client-side interactivity libraries like jQuery, which will allow you to polish the application with greater ease; with WPF you would likely find yourself paying for a lot of the fancy UI controls.
There is quite a few survey and question (test creating) systems built in access. I don’t see any real issues in using access as opposed to whatever system.
The advantage of HTML or text based systems is they tend to support a more dynamic type of screens.
On the other hand, for questions and display of text, in access a great trick is to place a sub-form control on a form, and then at runtime simply “set” what form is to be displayed in that sub-form (the source object properity). In fact, in access 2010, the nav control does exactly that and it displays forms as a sub-form.
Also for access 2010 we can create web based applications. In this video you can see that the half way mark, I switch to running the application in a standard browser.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU4mH0jPntI
However, the above means little here, as I not sure what you mean by some type of rendering engine. Each question + response is simply going to be some text on a screen, and thus you can simply display/change that text by changing the underlying reocrdset.
And, if you want nice formatted text with different fonts etc, well access 2007 now has support for rich text (markup text). So I don’t think you really need dynamic screen creating. Between changing the record source to display whatever text you want, and that of being able to display different forms (templates) on the fly by changing the sub-forms “source object”, you can well change part of your screen to display different text boxes with very little code.
On the other hand, if you have all of the .net tools and want to create a browser based application then you are free to do so. I suppose you could also wait for access 2010 to create a browser application.
If you willing to keep this simple, then access is a great choice. If you need a browser based application, then I don't access is the choice here.