Using the Windows 8.1 Hub as an ItemsControl 06 January 2014 Diederik-Krols WinRT This article presents a Windows 8.1 Hub control with ItemsSource and ItemTemplate properties, making it easily bindable and more MVVM-friendly. The Hub control has become the main host on the startup screen of many Windows Store apps: it’s flexible but still presents a standard look-and-feel w... [More]
First time MVP 02 January 2014 Diederik-Krols It is with great pride that I announce that I was presented with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award for the very first time. For the next 12 months, I’m an MVP in the Client Development category, which has an impressively strong Belgian representation. I would like to thank M... [More]
Using Lex.DB as a local storage in a Windows 8 Store app 10 December 2013 Diederik-Krols WinRT Lex.DB is a lightweight, in-process database engine, completely written in C#. It can be used on .NET 4+, Silverlight 5+, Windows Phone 8+, WinRT, and Android (through Xamarin). That makes it a direct competitor against SQLite. The latter seems to become the de facto standard for storing structured ... [More]
Using SQLite in a Windows Store MVVM App 05 December 2013 Diederik-Krols WinRT Some of my Windows Store Apps are desperately seeking for a local database. I was getting tired of waiting on Microsoft to release a SQL Express for WinRT - which as far as I know, was never planned. So I decided to test-drive SQLite: a free, technology neutral, self-contained, zero-configuration, t... [More]
Drawing a Circular Gradient in Windows Store and Windows Phone apps 15 November 2013 Diederik-Krols Windows Phone, WinRT This article shows a way to easily create a circular gradient effect in a Windows Store app or a Windows Phone app. The standard linear and radial gradients are nice, but they do not allow you to draw something like this: <Spoiler> There’s no magic involved. </Spoiler> What we&... [More]
A Modern UI radial gauge control for Windows Phone 8 apps 05 November 2013 Diederik-Krols Windows Phone In this short article I proudly present the Windows Phone 8 version of the Modern UI Radial Gauge. This control was designed by Arturo Toledo during a UI Design Review of this Windows 8 Store app. I made a custom control of it, that I recently ported to Windows Phone 8. That went a lot easier t... [More]
An auto-hyperlinking RichTextBlock for Windows 8.1 Store apps 29 October 2013 Diederik-Krols WinRT This article shows how to let a XAML RichTextBlock control detect URLs and email addresses in its raw text, and show these as hyperlinks. The code only applies to Windows 8.1 because I’m using the brand new Hyperlink control. Here’s a screenshot of the attached sample app. There’s ... [More]
An Image Cropper control for Windows 8 Store apps 11 October 2013 Diederik-Krols WinRT This article presents a Windows 8 Store app XAML control that allows the user to select an area in a displayed image, and get a reference to that area as a writeable bitmap. [More]
Reusing Vector Graphics in Windows 8 Store Apps 26 August 2013 Diederik-Krols WinRT The Flat Design paradigm and the related anti-skeumorphism movement make bitmap images less and less popular in today's apps and applications. Everywhere in the user interface, PNG's and JPG's are being replaced by crisp scalable light-weight vector graphics. In the XAML world these vector graphics ... [More]
Binding a Slider to an Enumeration in a Windows 8 Store app 22 July 2013 Diederik-Krols WinRT Very often the values inside an enumeration type represent a sequence or a ranking, like small-medium-large or good-better-best. In a UI it would be appropriate to represent such a field through a slider control. This article explains how to build such a slider in XAML and C# and how to use it ... [More]