Windows 8 Metro/Immersive App - Force Terminate - vb.net

I'm working on porting an app from iOS to WinRT/8 Metro/8 Immersive/Whatever the current name is.
On iOS, we have the ability to set Application does not run in background to YES to cause the app to actually quit whenever the user leaves the app.
I would like to figure out how to replicate this behavior in WinRT.
Yes, I understand that this is abnormal behavior.
Yes, I have thought this through.
Yes, I have an extremely good reason for doing this.
I'm assuming that during the userLeavingApp event, I would just call Application.Current.Exit(), but I can't seem to find the userLeavingApp event. I thought about using OnSuspending (Handles Me.Suspending) in App.xaml.vb, but that doesn't seem to be called quickly enough for me.
Is there a .NET equivalent of viewWillDisappear or something?
Any ideas? This is an important security characteristic of my app, and I'd hate to have such difficulty in an entire platform due to such a small issue.
Thanks!

I'm not actually seeing Application.Current.Exit() working in OnSuspending; although as you mention the suspending isn't happening fast enough for you (which is by design). Throwing an exception there didn't work for me either.
There is Window.VisibilityChanged and if I issue Exit/exception there, it does shutdown the app when another app takes over. That said, VisibilityChanged will fire under other circumstances too so not sure if you could cover all the scenarios or rely on them not changing. See here for a bit more context.
To echo #Filip, whose response just popped in, it's highly unlikely you'll pass certification. An Exit() call is tantamount to an exception.

I don't think your app will pass certification if you call Application.Current.Exit(). If you are really confident this is what you want - I guess it is worth a shot to try. You could though simply unload anything that uses memory/CPU when you exit.

Related

sending data between tweaks

I have a tweak with hooks to an app (tweak1)
The tweak is supposed to use a framework to execute some code.
Unfortunately within iOS7 I'm unable to do that.
However when the same code is executed in a separate tweak (tweak2) with hooks to springBoard, it runs just fine.
My question is possible for me to send a dictionary from the first tweak (tweak1) to tweak2 so it gets executed.
I think I need to use CPDistributedNotificationCenter. But not sure.
If that's the case, a helping suggestions or example would be greatly appreciated.
many thanks
CPDistributedNotificationCenter should work or you could just use NSDistributedNotificationCenter. It inherits from NSNotificationCenter, which we all know how to use.
Another solution I can suggest is CFMessagePort, which I'm using in my apps. I need to support iOS 4, which doesn't support NSDistributedNotificationCenter, so I ended up using CFMessagePort. It differs from notification model in that you can't send messages to everyone. You can only send messages between two known ports. But in your case it probably doesn't matter.
There is also the XPC API but I've never used it and can't say much about it. It's an IPC API so it should work. Many iOS components use it.

Monodroid wcf first call too slow

I do understand that the first wcf call is usually very slow. And that is the case in my app. I have tried to apply various solutions I have found through out internet with very little progress.
But the thing that puzzles me is the fact that all subsequent wcf calls even after having exited and reentered the app after few minutes are very fast. Am I correct in thinking that android somehow keeps some dll or whatever resource related to wcf infrastructure in some memory cache so that even after reentering the app calls are fast ? If that is the case, can I use this same technique to keep "wcf resources" ready to fire for my app? (I hope my question is clear :-) Thank you in advance

Is it possible to relauches an ipad application?

I have an application used mainly with uiwebview since we have a lot of work based on the website so it is quicker to show it directly on webview without re-coding it. The problem with webview, it is very expensive on memory. The UI is running fine throughout 10 times of going through from beginning of the application to the end of the application and repeating the process. On the other hand, the webview started to get slow when it doing some javascript animation using Canvas object. I have put in some code to remove NSUrlCache when it received warning.
Our application is based on navigating through stacked pages. When it gets to the end, user basically goes back to beginning. In my mind, I wanted to relaunch the application when I knows the application started to run slow. I know it is not a good idea to do this but I don't know what is the best way of reclaim the memory. I have looked through all of my code and have released what i have to released. The Application is going well without problem but it is just the uiwebview caused the performance.
Please Help...
Short answer: Not possible. You'll have to find a different way to address your performance problems.
If UIWebView is bottlenecking your application then the solution would be to NOT use UIWebView. You cannot simply "restart" or "reset" your application. If performance is decreasing over time as your app is being used then this suggests that you might not be managing your memory or object allocations properly. You can use the Leaks instrument to debug your application and try to hunt down memory leaks and you can use the Allocations instrument to analyze your object allocations.

What can cause a UIView to be arbitrarily removed from the hierarchy?

I have an iPhone app that, for some users, sometimes behaves as if with the main UIView has been removed from the view hierarchy. It always happens coincident with a significant event in the game. Other Core Graphics-drawn UIViews that are above it in the z-order remain, but the main one (an OpenGL view) appears to be gone, leaving the background (a solid color).
The app does not crash (it keeps running, without the view), and this seems to happen very consistently for affected users. Unfortunately I am not able to reproduce it.
I suspect a memory issue -- that would be the easiest explanation -- but based on my reading it looks like didReceiveMemoryWarning only deallocs views that aren't visible, and aside from that the memory usage for my app is pretty small. Also, the "significant event" only results in OpenGL drawing and a SoundEngine call -- no view manipulation.
Anybody out there seen something like this before?
Yes, infact one of my applications very occasionally exhibits this problem and it does seem to be memory related.
I have had no success tracking it down either by debugging or analyzing the program flow. I have verified that the view in question is destroyed and not just hidden in some way.
It happens so infrequently that I haven't looked into it to deeply, but I do think it's caused by something in the OS in some way,
You can easily test low memory in the simulator to debug this problem if it is memory related.
The problem ended up being an uncaught NSException (from a third party library) thrown in the app's timer thread, which killed the timer thread but not the rest of the app. The good news is that crash reports are generated in this case, which can make tracking it down much easier if you know to look/ask for them.
As is made clear in the SDK documentation, when your app is running low on memory, views that are not in use can be collected. When it's needed again, it's re-created. This is to conserve precious iPhone resources. Your best bet is to retain the view so it can't be released.

Best way of Multithreading

I have a college assignment due quite soon, and I need to be able to call a C++ dll that takes a long time (possibly infinte, it relies on user input)to execute. Im calling this through VB. My VB GUI freezes up when this happens, and I would like to keep the GUI responsive, so that the user can stop this possibly infinte loop.
Can anyone suggest the best/fastest way of doing this?
A bit of background, the C++ is trying to keep score on a snooker table using a webcam, and while the VB scoreboard updates easily, I would like to script it so that the analysis is almost continuous, while still allowing the user to interact. Currently the project requires the user to press a button to start the shot analysis, but it would be preferable if the program scripted itself. I have only realised this problem now and the deadline is very soon.
Update: Our lecturer suggested an option to solve the problem, but it would appear that most options here and the one he suggested will not work for us as the processing time required for the webcam image capture is too great to handle due to hardware constraints. Thanks for taking the time to help, it was much appreciated!
The best way to handle threading in VB.NET is via the System.Threading namespace.
You might also look into Application.DoEvents()
Try the system.Threading as Mark said, also try looking at Background Worker Process which is a bit simpler in VB.NET. Readup here
I would definitely use the Background Worker process. You can drag it onto your form and use the DoWork sub routine to actually do the work that is freezing your GUI thread. You can also use the ReportProgress event to actually provide progress back to your form.
As for your question regarding two separate threads, If both steps take a long time to complete I would run them in the same thread one after the other.
The one thing that could bite you with using the thread is cross-threading. In the context of your problem this means not having your second thread update form controls.
A really good resource for how to implement this code along with dealing with cross-threading is this PDF.
I also should point out that if you are using .net 1.0/1.1 you can still do the multi-threading, but don't have the luxary of having a background worker control. You'd just have to create a new thread from the System.Threading Namespace.
Just as an alternative, you could have your C++ actually processing in the background all the time. When called from VB, it would just be retrieving data from it or sending it a command (start, quit, ???) all of which would return instantly.
This could also give you more reliability since C++ would never miss video frames while VB was collecting the garbage or doing the dishes or whatever VB does in the background--C++ is going to let you be closer to a real time system.
RE: the comment about how.
What I'd probably do is have my VB programs send "Messages" to the C++ (As I said). A message is just a way to think of a function/method call--but generally they return quickly.
The "Start" message would tell the C++ code to start it's thread running and return. This is a Linux C++ thread howto, I'm not sure if you need to do something different in windows (I'd hope not, but I haven't used C++ as my main dev. language in decades).
If that doesn't work, just google "C++ Threads"
Sending a "Stop" message would stop the thread (and probably free resources).
A "Get Data" call would go to the location that the C++ thread used to store data, grab it and return.
Sorry to be so general, I'm pretty heavily Java these days.
I'm surprised nobody has suggested using a BackgroundWorker yet.