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!

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!

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!

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

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

Every new award is always a great emotion; I would like to thank all the people that supported me including the smart guys working in Microsoft, my amazing MVP lead Alessandro Teglia,  the fantastic groups of the insiders lists and the “terrific” Silverlight MVPs. You all rock.

Enjoy and continue XAMLing everyone, big times ahead!

More resources available in this post @ ExpressionBlend.com.

Enjoy!

]]> http://www.davidezordan.net/blog/?feed=rss2&p=2651 1 http://www.davidezordan.net/blog/?p=2640 http://www.davidezordan.net/blog/?p=2640#comments Mon, 21 May 2012 20:22:52 +0000 Davide http://www.davidezordan.net/blog/?p=2640

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!

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

Click here to read the details and access the download link on CodePlex.

New to Windows 8 development? Mark your calendars: the new book “Programming Windows, Sixth edition” by Charles Petzold is coming soon!

Happy XAMLing everyone