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Article: Tombstoning and the Zen of Async for Windows Phone
My first article for MSDN Magazine got posted recently. Tombstoning and the Zen of Async for Windows Phone. This article talks about some lessons that I learned the hard way developing (and later completely re-writing) my first application for Windows Phone 7. Enjoy. -Ben
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Prediction: Windows Phone 8 with Windows 8 Kernel soon.
As I was getting ready this morning, I started thinking about the technical hurdles that the Windows Phone SDK team must have around Windows 8. I wonder if we’re going to see a phone (or at least a virtual machine) running on the Windows 8 kernel sooner than we think. This whole idea has the…
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Disable REST WebRequest URL caching on WP7 Mango
I’m writing an application for Windows Phone 7 Mango that should be hitting the marketplace shortly. The application allows you to access the real-time feeds that report MBTA bus locations and predictions for when buses will arrive at a particular stop. These feeds are exposed as REST services. Yesterday, I found that I wasn’t able…
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List of standard icons for Windows Phone 7 (WP7)
Maybe I’m simply a total failure at The Google(s) and The Bing(s) but I went looking for the list of standard icons for Windows Phone 7 (WP7) and couldn’t find it anywhere. After a ton of hunting, I found the icons in C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft SDKsWindows Phonev7.0Icons. Here are the icon names: appbar.add.rest.png appbar.back.rest.png appbar.basecircle.rest.png…
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VSLive Vegas: Top 7 Lessons From My First Big Silverlight Project
I’m catching up on my blogging today and I’m posting stuff that should have gone up a while ago. A few months back, I did a Silverlight best practices session at VSLive Las Vegas. Top 7 Lessons Learned On My First Big Silverlight Project Silverlight is tricky. You’d think it’d be just like writing any…
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6 Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) Tips for Unit Testing Silverlight, WP7, and WPF
My article for Visual Studio Magazine just went live. “6 Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) Tips: Leverage ViewModel and Unit Test Silverlight and WP7 Apps” Here are the tips: 1. Separate the Model from the ViewModel, no matter what 2. The classes from “Add Service Reference” are not your Models or your ViewModels 3. Separate your ViewModel and…
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How do I think about unit testing Silverlight? What’s my process? (Part 1)
My job as a software consultant can be a little vague. Sometimes I’m coaching a team. Sometimes I’m training a company on how to use Team Foundation Server (TFS). Sometimes I’m an architect or developer. The thread that seems to go through all of these different types of work is that I’m almost always evangelizing…
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My First Windows Phone 7 App Is Live: NPR Listener
The title pretty much says it all. My first Windows Phone 7 (WP7) application was approved and is live on the Zune Marketplace. It’s called NPR Listener and (surprise) it accesses National Public Radio’s (NPR) web service APIs so that you can stream the audio for the stories that they’ve published. It’s free so go…