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!