Damian's Blog

New App: Chrync – syncs Chrome bookmarks and more to Windows Phone

damian — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 17:43:14 +0000

Chrync syncs your Chrome bookmarks, recently viewed pages and open tabs down to your Windows Phone.

Click here for a short video of it in action.

You don’t have to install any special Chrome add-in for it to work, and the only servers Chrync talks to are Google’s own servers, to authenticate and then to sync.

The way I’ve implemented Chrync is that it talks to Google’s servers using the native Chrome sync protocol, exactly like Chrome itself does.

I’m charging US$0.99, but there is an unlimited trial – I’m fine for people to use it on a trial basis for as long as they want … The app is available from the marketplace here.

Give it a go and let me know what you think at this User Voice site.

Nokia showcasing Evernote for Windows Phone

damian — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:29:08 +0000

I'll not be giving up my day job, but it was fun doing these interviews ...

Evernote 2.0 for Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) released

damian — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 13:39:12 +0000

Presentation at the Evernote Trunk Conference on developing the Evernote Windows Phone client

damian — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:38:13 +0000

Elephants love mangoes – a look behind our Windows Phone 7 client

damian — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 07:42:07 +0000

I wrote this article for the Evernote Tech Blog last month, summarizing my experience developing the Windows Phone Evernote client: http://blog.evernote.com/tech/2011/06/28/look-behind-evernote-wp7/

HTC Gingerbread–automatically switching from Wifi to costly data connection

damian — Mon, 30 May 2011 14:17:23 +0000

I have an HTC Incredible S, and it’s a very nice phone indeed.

I recently upgraded Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread), and discovered that the Wifi connection was dropping in places at home where it had a perfectly usable (albeit weak) Wifi signal. Places where previously it had worked.

I fiddled with my Wifi base station, repositioning it, to no avail.

Finally I googled and found that HTC had decided to switch from Wifi to data if the Wifi signal dropped below a certain strength (88dbm). How nice of them to decide on my behalf that I wanted to switch from my (free) Wifi to my (expensive) data plan, even though I still had a perfectly usable (and free) Wifi connection – one that worked perfectly well in the previous OS version.

This is annoying for a couple of reasons. Firstly I can now run up horrendous data plan charges even though I’m within range of my Wifi. Secondly, I have services I run on my local Wifi (IP Cams, remote control software) that can no longer connect when I’m off my Wifi.

I’ve been a big HTC fan for a long time, and have gone through many of their ‘phones. This is a big disappointment for me – it stinks of paternalism/arrogance – deciding what is best for me without giving me a chance to override it. I am sure that it isn’t arrogance/paternalism – I am sure it made perfectly good engineering sense, perhaps because less battery will be consumed on data than on Wifi when on a weak link, but give me a choice.

I contacted HTC support and was told that yes, this behavior is new and that no, there was no way to downgrade – the suggestion was to switch off the Data connection when I was at home. Right, as if I will remember to do that.

I’ve ended up installing Tasker, and setting up a rule to switch off my Data connection when within range of my home Wifi. Not ideal, but it works.

How to: Windows 7 incoming VPN from Android

damian — Thu, 26 May 2011 17:37:42 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I tried to get my HTC Incredible S, running Gingerbread to connect via VPN to my Windows 7 box. I failed, but today I succeeded. This is how.

I created the incoming VPN on Windows 7 by following instructions I found on the web:

Open the Network and Sharing Center

Click on Change Adapter Settings

Press Alt-F, and select New Incoming Connection

Configure the incoming connection

Change the IPV4 properties to specify a DHCP range

Make sure the range you specify is on your LAN, and out of the range served by your DHCP server (you can updated your DHCP server to exclude this range).

Check the firewall

I went to Advanced Settings under Windows Firewall, clicked on Inbound Rules, clicked on the Local Port column to sort by that column, and then verified that the line for port 1723 was set up and enabled (Routing and Remote Access (PPTP-In).

Set up port forwarding

I then went to my Router configuration, and set up port forwarding, so that external connections to port 1723 were forwarded to the machine I just configured (which is always allocated the same IP address by the router):

Now my Android device can connect to my internal VPN using the default settings. You’ll need to know your external IP address. You can find it using tools like http://www.whatismyip.com/ but it may change. I have mine set up using http://www.dyndns.com/

GoBackAction–a Windows Phone Behavior to navigate back

damian — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:37:09 +0000

Behaviors are a great way to encapsulate functionality that can be used in a drag-and-drop environment such as Expression Blend.

Out of the box you get a NavigateToPageAction, but I couldn’t see an easy way to navigate backwards to the previous page using any of the built-in behaviors. I wanted to let the user click on an item in a list, and then have the Phone automatically navigate to the previous page.

So here it is, the world’s simplest behavior:

[DefaultTrigger(typeof (ButtonBase), typeof (System.Windows.Interactivity.EventTrigger), "Click")]
 [DefaultTrigger(typeof (UIElement), typeof (System.Windows.Interactivity.EventTrigger), "MouseLeftButtonDown")]
 public class GoBackAction : TriggerAction<FrameworkElement>
 {
     protected override void Invoke(object parameter)
     {
         var rootFrame = Application.Current.RootVisual as PhoneApplicationFrame;
         if(rootFrame !=null)
         {
             rootFrame.GoBack();
         }
     }
 }

Once you’ve built this class in your project, if you open your project in Expression Blend you should see the GoBackAction listed in the Behaviors section of the Assets tab. You can then drag the behavior onto a UI element, define the event that should trigger the action, and then when the event occurs you should be automatically navigated backwards.

Adapting Fluid List Animation to work with the LongListSelector

damian — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 09:33:06 +0000

Colin Eberhardt at ScottLogic has been doing some excellent work showing how we can make our own UIs animate in a fluid manner similar to the built in Microsoft UIs on Windows Phone.

His Fluid List Animation is particularly neat, and I thought I’d apply it to the UI I’m developing, specifically on a couple of LongListSelectors that I embed in Pivots.

Unfortunately his code didn’t work on the LongListSelector out of the box because although Colin went out of his way to make it work with any ItemsControl, the LongListSelector is not an ItemsControl. Fortunately his code was well commented, and it was trivial to modify it to work with the LongListSelector.

All the changes are in the OnIsPivotAnimatedChanged method in the ListAnimation class.

private static void OnIsPivotAnimatedChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args)
 {
 //  ItemsControl list = d as ItemsControl;
     LongListSelector list = d as LongListSelector;

Next find the section that starts with the comment “locate the stack panel that hosts the items” and replace the code that follows it (up to and including the for loop) with:

var itemsInView = list.GetItemsWithContainers(true, true);
 foreach (ContentPresenter item in itemsInView)
 {
     var localItem = item;
     list.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() =>
     {
         var animationTargets = localItem.Descendants().Where(p => GetAnimationLevel(p) > -1);
         foreach (FrameworkElement target in animationTargets)
         {
             // trigger the required animation
             GetAnimation(target, fromRight).Begin();
         }
     });
 }

The key is the call to GetItemsWithContainers – the first parameter indicates we only want items that are in view, and the second indicates we want the containers (hence the ContentPresenter type in the foreach).

That’s it – Colin did all the hard work – I just adapted it – all kudos to him.

So you think you’ve finished implementing that new Windows Phone 7 page?

damian — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 00:31:38 +0000

So you think you’ve finished implementing that new Windows Phone 7 page?

Have you checked that you:

are using resources for all user-visible strings?
have made sure the page handles rotation properly?
handle the Enter key on each TextBox to move to the next TextBox, or submit the page?
have set the InputScope on each TextBox?
handle tombstoning properly?
have set up Navigation transitions?
have tested with both the Light and Dark Themes?
are using the built-in resources for text styles?
override the Back button press if you are displaying popups?

What have I missed?