MDI / Multiple Tabs Flat Navigation App Bar in Windows Store Apps

Summary The Windows 8 User Experience Guidelines mentions two different navigation designs: the hierarchical and the flat system. As said in the guidelines, most Windows Store apps use the hierarchical system. But I needed a flat navigation. And in addition, I needed a way to implement a Multiple Document Interface …

Microsoft Advertising Services AdControl Error Handling in XAML/C#

Preface The Do’s + Don’ts of the Advertising SDK say “DO plan for times when no ads are available.” The links of that item leads to the ErrorCode enumeration and a rudimentarily error handling sample, writing text to debug output. In this post, I will show an error handling where …

Implement Settings Popup Pages for Windows Store Apps

Preface No, this is not the first sample to be found in the internet on this topic. Anyway, I decided to add another one because the two I was looking at (see links below) gave good ideas, but did not satisfied me at all. Changes to App.xaml.cs To begin, new …

Configure Microsoft Advertising Services’ AdControl using XAML/C#

Preface The Microsoft Advertising SDK for Windows 8 allows developers to show ads in their apps. When you look at the walkthrough for putting ads in an app using XAML/C#, you can see that you have to set the ApplicationId and AdUnitId property of each AdControl control in your app. …

Mimic app.config in Windows Store Apps

Preface I know, the concept of app.config files is not part of Windows Store App development. The docs and postings say that one should use local or roaming settings. But I needed something to pass environment depending initial data to the app. One scenario I can think of is the …

Windows Store App .NET Framework Subset

I’ve learned it when I created Silverlight apps – so why am I so surprised when playing around with Windows Store apps? The .NET framework for Windows Store apps only ‘provides a subset of managed types‘. This subset officially is called ‘.NET for Windows Store apps’. For details, please refer …

Regard The Sequence of XAML Style Definition

Going through a Windows Store App XAML sample, I came to the point where a pre-defined style, located in Common/StandardStyles.xaml file, should be used. The tutorial at msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/jj215600.aspx told me to remove the comments of PicturesAppBarButtonStyle. Well, that was not that hard. I deleted the XML comment markup and moved …