Cyberherbalist's Blog

Apparently since the release of the RTW version of the Windows Phone 7 development tools there is some odd thing showing up in the page.  It looks like some kind of numeric thing, and it appears on the right side along the top right edge.  Here’s a screen shot:

What are those odd figures on the right?

It is not static, either.  When something changes in the app (like a button is pressed), this item changes its appearance, as if it were changing its value.  The reason I think this is a post-RTW issue is that in apps that I orginally created using the Beta release it doesn’t appear.

I am rather mystified by this, and wonder if it’s something that might find its way into the finished app.

UPDATE: I posted this as a question on the Windows Phone 7 developer forum, and got an answer in very short order.  It turns out that the RTW tools automatically turn on the frame rate counter by default.  This is a development tool which is supposed to help developers keep tabs on the efficiency of your app.  This is nice; too bad I didn’t know it already.

Jeff Wilcox’s blog covers this subject HERE.  Thanks to Mick N — Trees for pointing out Jeff’s post.

I am still chugging away at my Conversion app.  I even have a working title for it: ConverterPlus!  The “plus” part is the fraction arithmetic functionality.  I know how fractions is everyone’s favorite (not), so maybe this will help.  Don’t let on to your math teacher than you have this app.  It will add, subtract, divide and multiply fractions.  It was fun to code, let me tell you.  I plan to make a video of it when I get a few minutes.

The word is, Microsoft is starting to put sample devices in the hands of developers!  I have put my name in the hat, and I really hope I can get one fairly soon.  It would really help my screen real estate planning to actually have a device in my hand.  I keep wondering if the buttons in the app are too small, spaced too closely together, and so on.  My ZuneHD has a calculator app, and the buttons seem pretty small and close together on that, yet it is still convenient to use, so perhaps I am worried too much!

I was fighting with the WP7 TextBox, trying to make the thing show up nicely when set to IsReadOnly=true, but there didn’t seem to be a way to override the readonly style, which really made the thing hard to read.  Reason I need it set to ReadOnly is this: I don’t want the Input Module popping up when the user touches the text box — because for one thing, I don’t want alphabetics and other non-numeric characters in there!  I could prevent this with a ReadOnly textbox, but the Beta version of the WP7 OS doesn’t have a ReadOnly style that is good enough, display-wise.  The CTP version was barely workable, but not the Beta.  So I’ve compromised: tossed out the TextBox and created my own control.

The control I created is a combination of the Border and the TextBlock control.  And it works very well, so I’m pleased!  I’ll be showing this off in my next YouTube post.  Maybe in a couple of days.

More work yet to do!

I’ve also now come up with about five or six new ideas for apps!  I hope I have enough time to build a few of them before WP7 goes into general release.

I haven’t yet written anything about what I am working on with respect to Windows Phone 7.  My first thought on the matter was that maybe I shouldn’t say anything, because it’s supposed to be a for-profit product and handing out information would serve to give my competitors information to help them compete against me.  My second thought was to laugh out loud at such presumption!  So far hardly anyone has read this blog — thank gooodness WordPress provides statistics or I wouldn’t know this — so I’m writing for my own sake, at least so far.  By the time any putative competitors read this blog, it will be way too late for them.  I suppose, anyway.  Well, it really doesn’t matter at all, in the end, because what I’m working on has in fact already been done for Windows Mobile, Palm, and iPhone anyway.  If I can think of it, of course someone else can, and has!  Heck, there’s probably three other development outfits developing what I’m developing.  So, what am I doing?

This is What I’m Doing

When I initially decided to learn WP7 in order to develop a useful and hopefully popular app for the new system, I was at a loss for what kind of app to write.  I have a co-worker at my day job who has an iPhone and he showed me a few of them.  The most impressive one (to me, at least), was an app that makes an iPhone into a level — you know, the tool one uses to make sure what you’re building is level, or 90^o upright?  This quite exceeded my imagination at the time.  I thought that maybe I could write a level app, but when I checked on how crowded that particular field was, I found that everyone and his or her brother had built level apps for the iPhone.  Go ahead, check Google or Bing, you’ll find lots of them.  And Stanley, the toolmaker, has even produced a level app for the iPhone.  I think that if I were to produce a level app for WP7 it would only be for the purpose of learning how to use the phone’s accelerometer.

I suppose one could use a phone as a hammer, too, but this wouldn’t require an app!  And you’d need a new phone afterwards, too.  A trifle expensive.

Kidding aside, I finally hit on something useful, and something that doesn’t necessarily have a big firm, like Stanley, that would be a natural force majeure to compete with.  Some developer whose blog I follow (sorry, don’t remember who it was), said that he was hoping someone would develop a conversion app for the new system.  BINGO!  This actually corresponded nicely with a bit of fascination on my part, since I have always been greatly interested in the huge range of measuring systems that humans have produced over the millenia.  Remember the Bibical measurement of Noah’s Ark?  How many cubits long was it, now?  And I remember Bill Cosby’s comedy routine based on Noah’s Ark, “Noah: Right!”

God: Get some wood, build it 300 cubits by 80 cubits by 40 cubits…
Noah: Right!  Uh, what’s a cubit?

So, what is a cubit, more to the point, how many inches is a cubit?

Well, maybe knowing how many inches there are in a cubit isn’t all that useful (there’s no single cubit, anyway, it was a common measure in ancient days, and every culture had its own version, one size definitely didn’t fit all).  But for those who must deal with different measurement systems, being able to tell that 1 liter is equal to 0.264 gallons might be helpful.  Even more valuable might be that 1 acre-foot is equal to 1,233,481.84 liters.  Depending upon who you are and what you do.  So that’s what I’m doing, building a measurement conversion app.

Now you can clearly get this information from Google or Bing, with only a little bit of setup (like, if you ask the question correctly).  But if you have a need to get this kind of thing at any time and fairly frequently, then a phone app would be more convenient.  And that’s what I’m building!

As I mentioned in my last post, I was attending a Microsoft Event called Windows Phone 7 Jump Start.  That was yesterday and the day before, now, and having dragged my sorry self back home last night late.  I say “sorry self” because the drive out of Redmond was a PIG — I should have waited until 8 pm to leave, because the traffic on the 520, even at 6 pm was horrible.  Just getting on the darned freeway was frustrating, and I spent a half hour going a mile.  I got off and took a surface street south to Bellevue, where I stopped at a Dairy Queen, got something to eat, and then rejoined I-405 South from I-90.  Traffic there was much more comfortable — by this time, it was merely “heavy” as opposed to “bumper to bumper”.  By the time I got home (at 9:30 pm) I was ready for bed.  Well, enough complaining.

The Jump Start was excellent.  I was already enthusiastic about this platform, and all I can say now is Hallelujah!  This is going to be cool!

I didn’t actually expect to run into Paul Thurrott while on the Microsoft Campus, and he reports that they had him roped in pretty tight in his examination of the Windows Phone 7 device he came here to examine for his book, Windows Phone 7 Secrets.  In fact, “…they very specifically kept me away from the Windows Phone Jumpstart (or any other human interaction).*”  I guess I know why, and that would be that if he were to say something inadvertantly to any of us (I know I would have loved to talk with him, just in general), none of us were under NDA, and that would have meant that we had basically free rein to blab all about what he had just told us.  I used to be in the Army with a Secret clearance, so I understand all about security.  Loose lips sink ships, and all that.  Or in this case, loose lips talking about capabilities that might not be fully developed could cause all kinds of industry expectations to be disappointed in case they don’t make it to the final product.  I think Microsoft has learned a good lesson from past mistakes in this area!

By the way, I suggest having a listen to the current Windows Weekly podcast, since Paul and Leo Laporte do talk about Paul’s experience at Microsoft this week, to the extent he is permitted by his Non-disclosure Agreement (NDA)!  It’s a great show this week, but I do have a bit of consternation over one thing that Paul said.

About 13:30 into the podcast, Paul said that developers would be able to add their own Hubs (if you don’t know what that is, look down  this post a bit), but that specific question was asked at the Jump Start and though they said that developers would be able to enhance the built-in Hubs with their apps, the answer the question of adding Hubs was: “Nope.”   Maybe there’s a matter of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, but there seems to be a slight contradiction here.  Paul indicated that a more advanced version of the toolkit would make it possible, but the Jump Start team did not make that qualification.

Here’s the People Hub:

Consumers vs Business Users

One of Ms Foley’s “risks” with regard to Windows Phone 7 was that Microsoft’s older Windows Mobile 6.5 users weren’t going to find their apps working on the new system, and I’ve actually heard worries being expressed about Microsoft’s new emphasis on the consumer at the expense of the business user in the new system.

Rot.

Windows Phone 7 is going to be huge.  Business users benefit greatly from Windows itself being available in private homes, and not just in the office, because this enlarges the market considerably, and makes for a larger ecosystem of development companies.  The exact same thing will make Windows Phone 7 a much better environment for business users than Windows Mobile ever was.  There were about 50 developers, from all parts of the country, who showed up on VERY short notice (a few weeks) to the Windows Phone 7 Jump Start, and when they asked how many of us were planning to develop apps for the WP7 system, virtually all hands went up.

I have this “feeling” about Windows Phone 7.  And that feeling is that the naysayers are absolutely out to lunch.  When this mobile operating system ships, it is going to get big really quickly.  And a large part of that is going to be the number of apps that will be available when it ships.

And I’ll be doing my part to make this happen, believe me.

The “big boys” will be working overtime porting their Windows Mobile 6.5 (and earlier) apps to the Windows Phone 7.  For one thing, they have LOTS of time to do it!  If they can’t find the time between now and “Holiday 2010” then they deserve to fail.  Big time.  I’ve been looking at the development tools for WP7, and I can tell you there is nothing better under the sun.  I’m repeating myself from an earlier post, but it bears repeating.  And if you can’t re-tool, well then, can you call yourself a developer?  I don’t think so.

And for those Visual Basic developers who are afraid of C# (wusses), the word from the Jump Start was: Visual Basic will be coming to WP7.  Eventually.  They couldn’t commit to a schedule on that, but the general feeling they conveyed was that the VB team was working towards it with some degree of feverishness.