Vipul Patel

Overview As part of Windows 8.1, Microsoft plans to introduce over 5000 new APIs, making more features accessible to Windows developers. To make it easy for Windows Store developers, Microsoft is introducing a bunch of new controls to make common tasks easier. One such control, which is being released as part of Windows 8.1, is […]

Introduction To ensure that a Windows Phone application can work with the plethora of devices out there, there are certain considerations that need to be heeded when designing your application. In this article, I will show you how to design to ensure the expanded outreach of your Windows Phone applications. Things to Care About in […]

Introduction During Build 2013, the annual Microsoft conference introduced Windows developers to over 5000 new APIs, which would arrive in the form of Windows 8.1. One of the new features being introduced in Windows 8.1 is the ability to create a properly designed app bars using the AppBar controls. We learned in an earlier article […]

Introduction Smart Devices are increasingly being used at Point of Service (POS) terminals. Increasingly, we are seeing tablets being used as checkout devices. To capitalize on the potential, Microsoft has introduced first class support for Point of Service devices with new APIs that specialize for these devices. These APIs will work with barcode scanners and […]

Introduction Microsoft prides itself in having a strong aesthetic sense when it comes to the design of Windows 8. To ensure that applications built for Windows adhere to design theme, Microsoft has even published Design Principles for Windows applications (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa511328.aspx) . One of the things that applications typically need is app bar command buttons. To […]

Introduction With Windows 8.1, Microsoft has introduced a lot of new programmatic capabilities. One of the features announced as part of Build 2013 was the introduction of APIs that would allow Windows Store applications to work with scanners. The scanning APIs are located in the Windows.Devices.Scanners namespace. The scanning APIs are built on top of […]

Introduction In an earlier article, we learned about support for some of gestures in Windows 8. In this article, we will cover the other gestures supported on Windows 8 and learn how we can programmatically detect them in our Windows Store applications. In the previous article, we had covered gestures such as tap, slide and […]

Overview Microsoft designed Windows 8 with touch in mind from the ground up. This is evident from the fact that they offer 2 SKUs – Windows RT (which is the basic SKU, which is touch based) and Windows RT Pro (which is an advanced SKU, supporting other input methods). Since touch is one of the […]

Introduction As part of Windows 8.1, Microsoft will be introducing over 5000 new APIs enabling a bunch of new features under the umbrella of its flag ship product – the next version of the Windows operating system. One of the new features to be introduced as part of Windows 8.1 is the programmatic access to […]

Introduction During Build 2013, the annual conference targeted towards developers of Windows platforms, Microsoft announced over 5000 new APIs coming as part of Windows 8.1, a free update over Windows 8. One of the new features announced was the search-box control, which can be used to provide search results. Now, there is a dedicated control […]

Introduction At Build 2013, Microsoft announced details about Windows 8.1, the successor to the Windows 8 operating system.  It was announced that more than 5000 new APIs will be introduced in Windows 8.1. One of the new features being introduced is the Flyout control, which allows the application to show temporary information related to the […]

Introduction At Build 2013, Microsoft’s annual conference targeted for developers, Microsoft unveiled over 5000 new APIs and a bunch of new UI controls slated to arrive to users as the next release of Windows, called Windows 8.1. This release, which is going to be a free update to Windows 8 users, is intended to bring […]