I want to add reminders in my application and the user should have facility to ON/OFF the reminders. I did it in windows phone, but I can't find the Reminder class in windows 8.
We have toast notifications in Windows 8 apps, which can be used as reminders (a rectangular pop-up that will appear in the upper right-hand corner of your machine, no matter what program you are currently using). More info at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh761493.aspx (also see the topics below this for how-to info).
The end user has the ability to turn off notifications globally (from all apps) or just from a single app.
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We have implemented a tablet-based application using Oracle MAF. The application runs on Windows UWP. When it was rolled out last year, it has been working fine until the customers upgraded Windows UWP on their laptops to Windows Anniversary edition. After some investigation, We found the following issues:
When user clicks on input text fields in a popup dialogue, the
application randomly crashes (not always but frequently).
When user clicks on input text fields in a normal window (i.e. not in a popup dialogue), and if the screen resolution is scaled (e.g. 150%), the
application also randomly crashes.
When screen resolution is not scaled (i.e. 100%), clicking on input text fields in a normal window
does not seem to cause crash. However, clicking on input text fields
in a popup dialogue can still cause crash.
We could not find any useful/relevant info in Windows log or in our application log.
We have also tested our application with the latest Windows Creator Edition and MAF 2.4.1, we found that the chances of random crashing seemed to have decreased, but crashing could still happen.
We have checked the Oracle MAF certification information at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/maf/documentation/maf241certmatrix-3746359.html.
It states that "Any tablet or desktop running Windows 10 with Intel processor" are supported. Our customers' laptop specs are:
Lenovo Yoga with Intel Core i5 processor;
Windows 10 Anniversary Edition;
Full High Resolution screen (1920x1080)
Therefore, we believe the customer laptops provide certified runtime environment for MAF applications.
We have researched various technical forums. There seems to be little information about using MAF under Windows UWP environment.
Because our application has been used in production, and the customer corporate mandate is to use Windows 10 Anniversary edition, the customer expressed grave concerns to us for choosing MAF as the mobile platform technology, and we are now under enormous pressure to fix this issue. Any suggestions and pointers will be highly appreciated.
If you can create a reusable test case, my recommendation to you is to lodge a Service Request with Oracle Support so Oracle's development teams can look at this.
We have done further investigation on the issue "input text field causing crash on Windows 10 Anniversary Edition". This time we used the demo CompGallery application from Oracle. We navigated to the "text box" tab, clicked on the text box in "outside a form", entered some text, then clicked on "inside a form" text box. The application crashed (or repeat the above sequence a couple of times on Windows Creator Edition, the application would crash). Note by using "tab" key or screen tapping to navigate between input text fields, we can avoid crashing. With extra clicks on different input text fields before entering text, we can avoid crashing as well.
The CompGallery screen is shown below:
We then looked at the Windows log, not much details were revealed. It contains an event related to the failure of edgethtml.dll, as shown in the screenshot below.
Can anyone enlighten me as to how one would be able to trigger a "non standard" realtime notification on a Windows 8 machine? My objective here was simply to find a slick method through which the end user is presented with an enhanced notification slide displayed via a slide in/5 second fade out dialog box.
Best example I can think of to illustrate what I am trying to achieve would be thinking of it like when the charms bar is presented which can automatically fade away. I simply require that this enhanced notification layer is somewhat customizable in order for me to provide summary content along with 3-4 buttons a user can press directly. This notifications needs to be triggered automatically upon the system receiving a push notification.
I have loomed into various "notification" methods such as default windows notifications, offline Google Apps notifications,... problem however is that they all seem not to allow me to customize the notification window to meet my needs.
Any suggestions / examples would be very helpful.
BTW - as an alternative solution - is there simply a way that I might be able to have Windows automatically load and "snap" into view the contents of a specific Windows app containing my content to the left or right side of the screen (upon receiving a push notification vs displaying the standard toast bubble?
Are you looking for something like growl?
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've started doing Windows 8 Store app development for some projects at work, but I do not have a touch screen device of my own at home. If I write a personal app for submission to the store, I must use my own hardware since I can't use the work computers for personal projects. My concern is getting into a situation where I submit an app to the store, then have touch-screen users describing issues that I can't replicate on a non-touch-screen device.
Are there any functions or capabilities or interactions that behave differently in a Windows 8 store app when using touch vs. using only a mouse? Are there any scenarios I could encounter where I would be at a loss to reproduce or troubleshoot a user's problems if I do not have a touch screen?
As Konstantin suggested, a tablet is strongly recommended.
The next best thing is to use the device simulator in Visual Studio. It will let you change screen sizes, and allows you to simulate basic touch gestures with the mouse. This MSDN link has more info: Testing Windows 8 apps using Visual Studio 2012
Microsoft have introduced events that are pointer agnostic meaning that they should function the same way regardless of whether you are using a touchscreen, a mouse or a pen. Those are the MSPointer events. Here's some documentation. Using event handlers for these events mean that you should not be getting complaints from users about the touch friendliness of your application. However I still strongly suggest that you acquire a surface and test your application on it. Not just for the touch friendliness but also because of performance differences.
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.