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I’ve received several requests for publishing the MultiTouch Behaviors on the NuGet gallery so I created a simple package containing support for the Windows Phone and Silverlight platforms.

To enable your project for MultiTouch, just run the following command in the Package Manager Console and all the libraries and dependencies will be added to the Visual Studio project:

Alternatively just search for the package selecting Tools->Library Package Manager->Manage NuGet Packages for Solution from Visual Studio 2012.

If you are interested in creating a NuGet package for your open-source project, register an account here in the gallery and follow the instructions described in the section “Creating and Publishing a Package“: they are very clear and contain detailed information about the process.

The package definition for MultiTouch is also available in the Source Code section on CodePlex.

Happy Coding!

As you may know, the Microsoft Patterns & Practices team has recently released the final version of  ”Prism for Windows Runtime“, available for download here on CodePlex.

This project contains a complete guidance for building Windows Store apps using C# and XAML and includes the following resources:

• AdventureWorks Shopper Reference Implementation (RI): a complete sample built using the Prism library and applying the guidance;
  
• Source code for the Prism library and the RI;
• Complete documentation (online and free e-book) including quick-starts for Validation, Event Aggregation and MVVM;
• Prism for the Windows Runtime Templates for Visual Studio.

Big kudos to all the p & p team: they did an amazing job and I personally felt honored to have the possibility of providing feedback whilst the project was in development.

This is really a great guidance for building Windows Store applications that can be easily tested, maintained and extended: every developer building complex apps will benefit from it.

Other useful links:

• Pluralsight course “Building Windows Store Business Apps with Prism” by Brian Noyes;
• WinRT Business apps article series on SilverlightShow;
• Patterns & Practices: Prism for the Windows Runtime by David Britch.

Happy coding everyone!

I’m a big fan of separation of concerns: applying the correct architecture and patterns is the right way to make a successful project instead of making it fail.

There’s a lot of buzz in this period around Windows 8 and its programming model based around WinRT, WinJS, CSS3 and HTML: the platform is out from a while and it’s ready for prime time. What about applying some best practices for building awesome applications?

I’m coming from a XAML background and, in the past years, I had the opportunity to verify in real projects how the correct usage of patterns like MVVM, Commanding, Event Aggregation, Dependency Injection (and more…) permits the developer to build reliable, maintainable and scalable applications.

MVVM Stack for WinJS is a new project by my friend and Microsoft MVP Corrado Cavalli: it contains a set of  reusable classes that helps you creating Windows Store Applications using MVVM, messaging, suspend/resume support, Blendability (design-time data) and more.

The available documentation contains useful information about:

• Introduction
  Introduction to MVVM Stack http://bit.ly/mvvmstack1
• Core components
  Describes stack core components and loading sequence http://bit.ly/mvvmstack2
• Application specific components
  Describes application specific components, what they do and how to customize them http://bit.ly/mvvmstack3
• Page ViewModels
  Describes the viewmodels associated with each view http://bit.ly/mvvmstack4
• Custom bindings and Blendability
  Details about custom binding available in the demo and how to manage Blendability http://bit.ly/mvvmstack5
• Service persistence
  Describes how to handle services state during suspend/resume events http://bit.ly/mvvmstack6
• Command support
  Describes how to use Command instances exposed by ViewModels http://bit.ly/mvvmstack7
• Application resuming support
  Describes how to be notified each time app resumes http://bit.ly/mvvmstack8
  

The code is available for download on Codeplex and contains a sample application describing the concepts.

Happy coding everyone!

Great news for all Kinect for Windows developers and NUI enthusiasts: a new version of the SDK will be available for download on Monday March 18th, 2013 from the official site http://www.kinectforwindows.com.

A comprehensive list of the new tools and features is available in the official Kinect for Windows Blog:

• Kinect Interactions tools for creating smooth applications with interactions like push-to-press buttons, grip-to-pan capabilities, multiple users / two person support;
• Kinect Fusion tools for creating accurate 3-D renderings of people and objects;
• OpenCV and MATLAB Samples;
• Kinect for Windows Code Samples on CodePlex through an open-source license.

Happy Kinecting everyone!

I’m always interested in evaluating new tools and components for enriching the User eXperience of projects and shortening the time to market.

In the past I used for some projects XAML controls from Telerik and I’ve been always pleased with their performance, availability of samples and ease of use.

Recently I’ve received my copy of the new “Telerik RadControls for Windows 8” and I observed how the same approach has been applied to the new components for the Windows 8 platform.

RadControls for Windows 8 are native XAML and HTML components for creating Windows 8 apps. Built from the ground up for Windows 8, RadControls offer the same intuitive UI and UX no matter if you are developing in XAML or HTML environment. The suite offers functionalities such as DatePicker and Chart to complement the stock UI toolbox and shorten your app time to market.

If you have a certified app using the product, let Telerik know so that your app can get featured in the showcase gallery.

Check out an overview video here: http://youtu.be/yxzXFrlVPfc

Happy XAMLing everyone!

Just a quick post to highlight an interesting article by Blaine Wastell about a new project (codename “Kona“)  that will provide guidance on developing line of business (LOB) apps for Windows 8.

Check out this link for the details of this interesting project!

The last week has been very exciting for Microsoft developers: The //build/ conference in Redmond was full of amazing content including Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 SDK, Microsoft Surface, Xbox SmartGlass, Kinect for Windows and the new language TypeScript.

Unfortunately I hadn’t the possibility to participate at the conference but had some free time during the week-end to watch some of the recorded sessions available here on Channel9: this is really a great resource and I suggest everyone interested in Microsoft technologies to download some videos and have fun with it.

I decided then to take a look at the new features available in Windows Phone 8 and the related SDK: Justin Angel has a great article about this topic in the Nokia Developer Community.

To get my hands dirty I moved then on my personal Open-Source project “Multi-Touch Behaviors” on CodePlex: this is a set of Epression Blend Behaviors for different platforms including Windows Phone, Silverlight and WPF for applying gestures and manipulations (like the one available in the “old” ScatterView control) to generic XAML elements.

The project was not yet updated to Windows Phone 8 so I took this opportunity and experimented with the new SDK: this was really a great experience since I was able to upgrade quickly all my samples to the new platform using the same codebase used for the Silverlight version.

Unfortunately I haven’t the possibility  to test the performance on a real Windows Phone 8 device at the moment but the first impressions are really positive.

I have already checked in the code for WP8 here, I’m planning more testing and development in the future.

Happy XAMLing everyone

Check out these useful downloads including hands-on labs, presentations, samples and resources from the Windows 8 camps.

More resources available in this post @ ExpressionBlend.com.

Enjoy!

Great news for Kinect lovers today: a new version of the SDK and tools has been released and includes tons of new functionalities like

• Kinect Studio: a new tools for recording and playing back Kinect data;
• Face tracking SDK: real-time 3D mesh of facial features;
• Lot of new samples, additions and documentation improvements;
• New seated Skeletal tracking;
• New capabilities to enable avatar animation scenarios;
• Four new languages supported for speech recognition: French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese.

Click here to read the official announcement in the “Kinect for Windows” blog.

Happy Kinecting!

Great days and lot of new tools for Metro XAML developers on Windows 8.

Callisto is a new library of controls and helpers (including SQLite support) for Windows 8 XAML applications (aka Metro style apps) developed by Tim Heuer (@timheuer) and Morten Nielsen (@dotmorten).

Click here to access the project and download the new bits!

Enjoy