There are a few themes made available for free in Silverlight apps.
http://silverlight.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Silverlight%20Toolkit%20Overview%20Part%203&referringTitle=Home
but they come as dlls. Is there a way to extract actual templates in XAML in order to edit them?
Related
I am looking at a legacy .NET application and need to know if it is using Silverlight. If it is, I need to migrate the code to WPF, XAML, or HTML5.
Is there a specific set of namespaces and references that tell me that this is a Silverlight application?
Some indicators:
the ProjectTypeGuids element in the .csproj/.vbproj files contains the Silverlight project GUID: {A1591282-1198-4647-A2B1-27E5FF5F6F3B}
the System.* dependencies, when observed in the property grid in Visual Studio, would have version 5.0.5.0 or similar.
You can see a Silverlight project property with bellow link
Silverlight project property
I'm working on a xamarin forms (PCL) project (A basic customer care chat app which is meant to run on Android and iOS only) that has just two xaml pages, custom renderers and few dependencies. This project is meant to be implemented into another existing project (which I don't have access to its source code) such that an action would be binded to a button on the existing app to show a page on my own project.
There is need for me to share my chat project with my client's developer but without exposing my source codes, perhaps compiling to dll or nuget package that would be added to the existing project to access my project's functions and pages. I have searched through the xamarin forum and here on stackoverflow but can't seem to lay my hands on a solution.
Is this possible at all? If yes, what am I missing? If no, is there any better option to use?
Please do note that the chat app completely done, so I'm hoping perhaps there's a way I could directly convert the project to a Nuget package.
Thanks in anticipation!
If the host application is a Xamarin Forms one:
-Move your cross platform shared code into a PCL or .Net Standard (ContentPages, ContentViews, Classes).
-Move your Renderers and platform specific code to Android and iOs Class Libraries.
Your client will have to reference your first assembly (dll) in their XF assembly in order to instantiate/manipulate your views/classes and platform specifics one on their Back-end side (taking into account your renderers, effects, etc ...)
A lot of Xamarin Controls Libraries Open Source hosted on Github are working like that. For example this one: https://github.com/jamesmontemagno/Xamarin.Forms-PullToRefreshLayout
If the host application is a native application, take a look into Xamarin forms embedding
Finally, I seem to solve the problem by enabling visual studio to build Nuget packages for the chat app project (summing up to 3 nuget packages) on project build.
Thanks #Rudy Spano and #Micah Switzer for your contributions
Universal apps allow sharing of common assets in the Shared Project, including XAML pages. However the Hub App (Universal Apps) project template creates two distinct MainPage.xaml files in each platform-specific project.
Is there any reason for this? Am I going to regret putting all of my XAML files in the Shared Project?
If one XAML file can be used for both platforms then put it into the shared project. If the views differ too much between the platforms or the UI performance is bad when sharing XAML code then you should create separate XAML files and put them in both projects.
Putting the XAML file into the shared project is the same as having the same file in both projects. Adding files to the shared project is the same as linking files into a project - just more convenient. (Read this article about file linking and PCL)
I recommend to start with everything UI (e.g. XAML, converters, ...) in the shared project and view models and logic in an external PCL library (with W8 and WP8.1 targets).
If a view/XAML file is different in W8 or WP then you can copy the XAML for this particular view into both platform specific projects.
More detailed information:
http://blog.galasoft.ch/posts/2014/04/about-windows-phone-8-1-and-universal-apps/
I've created a custom managed bootstrapper in WPF using Wix 3.7. I used an existing XAML themes library to create the bootstrapper UI. I added the same themes library as a payload in the bootstrapper wxs file.
The problem is themes are getting applied during the design time but on running the bootstrapper's .exe file the themes are not getting applied.
Can some one tell me why it is happening?
You'll want to follow up with the implementation of the library to understand how the themes are loaded. Often, those types of libraries make assumptions that the files will be relative to the executable. Because the Burn engine is a native host those assumptions are incorrect. Instead, the library needs to load the themes relative to the current executing assembly.
When sharing code between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, the two core options for developers are 1) Windows Runtime Components and 2) Portal Class Libraries.
Windows Runtime Components use WinRT and can be projected into all the supported languages. They require linked files in separate projects (binaries) when used on different platforms. They, however, share 90% of the available WinRT APIs.
Portable Class Libraries are a subset (sometimes a significant subset) of the BCL that has binary compatibility across platforms. They can be used on WinRT applications but also on other project types like Silverlight, Xbox, etc.
When a developer is choosing a "sharing strategy" which project type is the go-to technique to do the best job sharing code between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8? Thanks.
It depends what form of sharing you need:
1) If you have a common C++ business logic layer you can use Windows Runtime (WinRT) components to expose this to both Windows Phone and Windows Store app (that's the only use-case for Windows Phone as you can't write a WP8 app using JavaScript or use .NET to author a WinRT component).
You'd have to build two separate WinRT components however, one for Phone and one for Windows Store. It should be possible to share the C++/CX code of your WinRT interop layer using preprocessor directives (#if) to mark the platform specific code.
2) You have business logic in C#/VB that only has dependencies on the .NET APIs which are available in a Portable Class Library. Then you can use Portable Class Library (PCL) to contain that logic. Basically if you can build your library into a PCL DLL then this should work. You can then reference this PCL in binary form in both Windows Phone and Windows Store app.
However as Martin has said you need to take care when using 3rd party libraries as these will also need to be built for PCL. Some 3rd party libraries are already available in PCL form (JSON.NET for example).
3) You want to share code for that has platform API dependencies (or 3rd party library dependencies) which are not supported by PCL. Then you'd need to create separate DLL libraries, one per platform. You can avoid code duplication using linked C#/VB source files and use a build flag (#if again) to allow small code changes between your target platforms.
If you want to share code between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, then you cannot use Windows Runtime Components, because there are different components used for Windows 8 and different for Windows Phone 8 and they are not interchangeable.
I would go for either Portable Class Libraries for some simple generic libraries, or for code sharing via links and #if WP8 compilation directives - this just works and is more powerful than Portable libs.
Keep also in mind that most external libraries like MVVM Light cannot be referenced in Portable Libs, so if you want to use them, you have to use the code sharing via file references.
For some guidance on how to effectively use Portable Class Libraries to share code between platforms, see this blog post: How to Make Portable Class Libraries Work for You
This question is no longer relevant with the introduction of Windows
Phone 8.1 Universal Apps in Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 which supports
Shared Projects.
Wait a moment, as for me even in Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 this question is still relevant because there are two types of projects there:
Class Library (Portable for Universal Apps) - PCL
and
Windows Runtime Component (Portable for Universal Apps) - WinMD
I can see only one big difference between them:
WinMD uses only WinRT and PCL could be used also with .Net and Silverlight. But I also want to know more about which one and when better to choose.