A C#/XAML FlipView Context Indicator for Windows 8 24 August 2012 Diederik-Krols Metro, WinRT This article presents a FlipView context indicator control for Windows 8 UI Style apps. FlipView is a Windows 8 items control that displays one item at a time. It allows traversing its collection of items through a horizontal flick gesture. There are some limitations in its usage. In an app, the max... [More]
Transforming SVG graphics to XAML Metro Icons 27 July 2012 Diederik-Krols Metro, WinRT This short article shows how to pimp your Windows 8 Metro apps with native XAML icons that are created from W3C Scalable Vector Graphics. SVG graphics are XML documents, and hence should be easily translatable into an other XML schema, such as XPS (the te... [More]
The taming of the Metro GridView 10 July 2012 Diederik-Krols Metro, WinRT This article describes how to restyle the Metro GridView to host a single page app like the sample Weather and Finance apps. I'll show you how to get rid of the default disco effects of this control - like the swiping behavior and the pressed animation. For this article... [More]
Modal Dialogs in Windows 8 Metro 13 June 2012 Diederik-Krols Metro, WinRT This article describes how to create modal dialogs in a Windows 8 MVVM Metro-style app. Here's the use case: a main page opens a dialog and provides it with some information. The dialog is displayed in the center of the screen, and collects some information. As long as the dialog is o... [More]
Binding to a ConverterParameter in Windows 8 Metro 01 June 2012 Diederik-Krols Metro, WinRT This article describes how to simulate databinding to a ConverterParameter in a Windows 8 Metro XAML app. Let's say we have a TextBlock that displays a value from the ViewModel, and a Converter that takes this value together with some Range object as parameter. The converter should return ... [More]
Look Mom, I’m on the Tablet Show 29 May 2012 Diederik-Krols Metro, WinRT People that know me will definitely confirm that I’m a silent, modest person, always trying to keep a low profile . Last week, however, Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell from the Tablet show pulled me way out of my comfort zone to produce a podcast on the development of enterprise application... [More]
Using Dynamic XAML in Windows 8 Metro 23 May 2012 Diederik-Krols Metro, WinRT This article describes how the Windows 8 Metro Consumer Preview deals with three standard ways of dynamically applying a look-and-feel to XAML controls. When working in Metro with XAML and data, you will want to maximally leverage the data binding capabilities of the platform fro... [More]
A XAML Settings Panel for Windows 8 Metro 08 April 2012 Diederik-Krols This article describes how to create a custom Settings Panel for a Windows 8 Metro app (Consumer Preview) using XAML and C#. It also describes a way to broadcast the new settings to the app's components. Apps written in JavaScript and HTML5 can make use of the SettingsFlyout control. There's a full ... [More]
Using the CarouselPanel in Windows 8 Metro 28 March 2012 Diederik-Krols Metro, WinRT Warning: content applies to Windows 8 Consumer Preview only. In the current release, the CarouselPanel can not be used in stand alone mode anymore. This short article describes how to use the CarouselPanel in a Windows 8 Consumer Preview Metro style app. Don't expect the spectacular rotating 3D eff... [More]
A StringFormat converter for Windows 8 Metro 20 March 2012 Diederik-Krols Metro, WinRT Some people seem to think that the world has only one language, one currency, and one way to represent a date, a time, or a number. So WinRT comes without a StringFormat option in data binding. I know for sure that I never built a WPF or Silverlight application without extensively using that StringF... [More]