I am developing an app that allows the user to make certain changes to tiles on the Windows 8 start screen. When a change has been made within the app, the user will be shown a "View my changes" button. Clicking the button should bring the user back to the start screen.
I have looked into different ways of closing/suspending the app programmatically (and thus taking the user to the start screen), but I have not found a way to achieve this using WinJS. Throwing an exception closes the app, but this seems like a very dirty workaround. Any suggestions?
I'm assuming you are creating secondary tiles and want to show the users what they look like? #mydogisbox is right in that this kind of functionality has probably been deliberatly excluded.
I'd recommend to just do an in-app 'view changes' of whatever changes to secondary tiles the user might have made. In general, I'd argue that this would be a better user experience because you will keep the user engaged within your application and not be essentially kicking them out of the experience.
Related
After choosing the user in the login view, the library saves this information somewhere so that the app has not to ask for the user again.
Where is this information stored? I need to know how to reset this setting for a fresh start?
If you're simply looking to switch between users, there is an easy way to do this when the app starts up.
On iOS, there is a brief message shown at the top of the screen when the app starts up, if you click on that, you can change to a different user.
On Android, there is a notification that you can reach by pulling down from the top of the screen once the app has started. Click on the notification and you can change user.
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 am implementing a simple webview application with only one url. I have over ridden back button function for webview navigation (which is working fine). Now my app has only one screen with webview and user visits the links inside main url and navigates using back button.
I want to know that, What is Microsoft Certification Policy as my application has only one screen so should it Close when user press back button anytime? Or Microsoft allows implementing of webview with over ridden back button functionality.
If question is still unclear Kindly tell me. I'll explain more but I need to know answer to this question.
Thanks.
You shoulld be fine, I have submitted applications which works like that myself which passed certification.
As long as the application quits when pressing the back button when there is no more "history" for the webbrowser control it shouldn't be a problem because the user still get the experience of moving "backward" in his use and can finally quit the app.
Regarding WebBrowser control and content of the app please consider this requirement:
"Your app and metadata must have distinct, substantial and legitimate content and purpose. Your app must provide functionality other than launching a webpage."
So, the application's sole functionality must not be only to launch a website.
This is not releated to back button but very important thing that need to be considered!
Best regard
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.
How would I go about locking a screen like Keychain does, meaning preventing all access to Dock, menubar, desktop, etc. Basically just a black screen that I can add a password field to, for the user to return to the desktop? I am well aware of the Carbon method, but I want the NSApplication method because this is an all Cocoa application.
Thanks~
If you can get away with not writing this code yourself, all for the better. It is usually a terrible idea to write your own code to lock the screen, considering the number of vulnerabilities that have been found in screen locking code over the years. If you have a Carbon call that can do it, go ahead and use that... don't worry about the "purity" of your Cocoa code.
However, if you decide to write this yourself, here's what you do:
First, capture all the screens using CoreGraphics. See: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/GraphicsImaging/Conceptual/QuartzDisplayServicesConceptual/Articles/DisplayCapture.html
Next, create a new NSWindow and put it in front of the window that's used for capturing the screens. You'll have to call a CG function to get the "order" of the black window covering each screen, and order the new window in front of that. Normally, the black window has an order so far forward that everything is behind it. Put a password field in the window. Do NOT use an ordinary text field or write your own code for password input. The password input field has a ton of special code in it so you can't copy text out of it, and other programs can't listen to keystrokes while you're typing into a password field. So use the one that Apple provides.
Last, put the computer in "kiosk mode". This mode allows you to disable alt-tab, user switching, the menubar and dock, and even the ability to force quit. See: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/KioskMode/Introduction/Introduction.html
It's not a lot of code, it just uses a few different APIs so you'll spend most of your time bouncing between API docs. I suggest writing the screen lock code as its own application (just add a new application target to your Xcode project) and then put the screen locker inside your application bundle. This used to be (as of 10.4) how Apple Remote Desktop implemented the "Lock Screen" functionality, but I can't find the app anymore.
I believe the Cocoa replacement to the SetSystemUIMode API was not introduced until 10.6.
If you can live with Snow-Leopard-only code, the answer is - setPresentationOptions: on NSApplication.