I have a desktop application for my telephone which launches a call on selection+ctrl+left click on any proper telephone number that appears in my desktop, by opening that application. I wanted to do similar functionality for Windows 8 store application. Is that possible?
Siva
I think the functionality you're after would be closest to a secondary tile. Have a look here for a sample.
Related
I am using Windows Forms application and I am not able to auto hide/show the touch keypad thats on the windows 10 Home OS on a tablet. How to handle the touch keypad, Can anyone help me out in this regard.
There's quite a lot of answers on google for this,
https://www.google.co.uk/search?source=hp&q=vb.net+hide+show+touch+keyboard+windows+10&oq=vb.net+hide+show+touch+keyboard+windows+10&gs_l=psy-ab.3...1296.11486.0.11948.28.27.0.0.0.0.75.1723.27.27.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..1.20.1290.0..0j0i131k1j0i67k1j0i22i30k1j0i13i30k1j0i8i13i30k1j33i22i29i30k1.TfxlEFKhnRI
Basically you need to create a process for the OSK, load it, and kill it (dependant on if its loaded). Loading and killing the process will show / hide the OSK.
I have a chat application written in VB.net which is used to chat between users who are connected in LAN inside a office . The application popups whenever user gets new chat message. It works fine in windows XP. But sometimes in windows 8 the application fails to popup the chat window. So my chat window is not appearing at the top when popup occurs for new messages.
I have tried using setwindowspos, form.Show(), form.BringToFront() which can bring the form to topmost. But sometimes this will not work properly.
So is there any other method other than those three(which i have mentioned above) i have used which can make the form popup and bring it to front.
Your WinForms app is a desktop application, so it's likely that the reason the pop-up is not being displayed in Windows 8 is because the desktop is not visible.
Remember that Windows 8 brings with it a whole new Start Screen interface and relegates the desktop to an alternate mode. All desktop applications still run, but they run in this separate mode and cannot interact with the new Metro applications (or whatever they're calling them nowadays). Yes, it's too bad that the usability folks at Microsoft didn't listen to Larry Tesler and have decided instead to mode us in, but c'est la vie.
So anyway, the pop-up is still being displayed, but it's being displayed on the desktop, which is not visible. Bringing it to the top isn't doing any good because it's already at the top of all the other windows on the desktop. If you click on the "Desktop" tile in the Start Screen, you should see your window.
Fixing this problem is going to take some work. Forcing a focus switch to the desktop mode is a horrible idea from a usability perspective, and I'm not sure it's even possible. A better solution would be to look into using Toast notifications instead, which can be done from a desktop application.
I'm making a Windows Phone application that needs a listbox that can "snap" to positions as it scrolls (just like the one in the Media Hub that shows current/future songs).
I've spent awhile looking all over google and can't find anything. Is there a native control that does it, or a third party library that contains it.
There are no built in controls that do this.
The SlideView from the Telerik RadControls can do this.
It's $99 or free if you sign up for the Nokia Premium Developer Program rather than sign up with the App Hub directly.
With windows 8, is it possible to create an application that is always visible? For instance, in previous versions of windows, there is the task bar with quick launch icons. Can I create something similar to the quick launch icons that are always on the screen?
If you are referring to a Windows 8 Store app then the answer is no. You can have a live tile and toast notifications that provides updates to the user which may cause the user to launch your application.
A good article to read to understand how your Windows Store apps will run on Windows 8 go here to learn about Application lifecycle (Windows Store apps). This will explain the App execution state.
It is not possible in the RT version, but the same is possible in the desktop version. If you have a desktop app, you can pin it to the taskbar. But any Window store app cannot be pinned to the taskbar. What you can do instead is move the app to the beginning of your Home screen, so anytime you click the Windows button your app will be visible right in front.
Do you mean always visible in the Star Menu screen? If so, you can add tile updating functionality to your application. As long as the user has the application pinned to the Start Menu, he would see the updates. Check the link below for an introductory tutorial.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/04/16/creating-a-great-tile-experience-part-1.aspx
"Quick Launch" has a very specific meaning, which you may or may not have been referring to in your question.
Below is the Quick Launch bar in Windows 8 - essentially a toolbar pointing to a location in your %AppData% directory. Prior to Windows 7 it was available by default, but the ability to now pin items directly to the taskbar rather supersedes it. Here's how you can restore Quick Launch if you really want to :)
It's, of course, available only in the Desktop mode and not on the Modern UI, where pinning a tile is the best you can hope for, and it's all up to the user to pin it AND to determine where it shows up on their Start Screen.
Another option worth mentioning (although more like system tray than quick launch) is lock screen presence. If the user chooses so and your app supports that, he can add it to his lock screen:
either as a a badge (up to 7 apps)
or as a tile notification (single app only)
This is not a way for the user to quickly start your app (other answers have already covered these options) but a way to stay visible and keep your user informed.
I am working on a windows service application that required to get the barcode reader characters and saving the value in database, I have tried some methods like this one:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/7294/Processing-Global-Mouse-and-Keyboard-Hooks-in-C
But they not working in the windows service app, does anyone knows how can I get the keyboard/barcode reader characters in the windows service?
Appreciate the help in advance,
Regards,
As already mentioned you can't get access to the keyboard and screen from a windows service in Windows platforms starting from Vista (the interact with desktop setting is no longer supported)
So you are better off just writing a standard application that launches when a user logs into the workstation.
Since most barcode readers function like keyboards your other problem will be determining when a barcode has been entered as opposed to normal keyboard activity. Either using some kind of attention sequence (like clicking on a tray icon) or timing the speed of characters (barcode characters will appear to be "typed" very quickly)
Your global keyboard hook will work just fine from a user-mode application too :-)
Happy coding