On Windows Store "crap apps"

Yes, Dear Reader, this actually happened. Now, I as much as the next dev will not beat around the bush when it comes to acknowledging there’s a problem with “crap apps” on the Windows (Phone) Store. But is there a platform that doesn’t have this problem? I doubt it. Shall we have a look? Yes.… Read More »

Application Insights in your WinForms? Yup!

Microsoft’s Application Insights is one hell of a tool. It was showcased a number of times throughout BUILD 2015 at the end of April and continues to make my jaw drop every time I see it shown off and look into my own instance of it. However, if you’re a Windows Desktop app developer (Forms,… Read More »

Visual Studio Online builds & external dependencies

As you’ve seen me post before, I use the Multilingual App Toolkit in my Upload to YouTube app to localize it in to many languages. Since MAT is an installed extension to Visual Studio (and msbuild), however, setting up Upload to YouTube for CI and Release builds done in my Visual Studio Online account ended… Read More »

Removing Ads with an IAP – the Declarative way

Microsoft’s XAML provides a way for us to define our UI in a declarative manner. Combined with databinding it means you should – in almost every case – never have to directly reference a UI control to accomplish some work. Add the MVVM design pattern in to the mix and I find myself “rethinking” any… Read More »

Programmatically changing UI language in Windows Phone

If you’ve done globally-focused development on Windows Phone, you already know that to change the display language, you have to do so in the Settings area of the phone, then reboot the emulator (or physical device) for the change to take effect. What a pain. Wouldn’t it be better to change the UI language on-demand?… Read More »