WP7 mango now supports background agents (with some limitations): http://blogs.msdn.com/b/danielegan/archive/2011/10/18/background-agents-in-wp7.aspx
How can I inspect the user's current activity? specifically, here is what i'd like to determine:
what is the active application
when was the last user interaction
I think the Microsoft way of doing this would be to provide developers with an API to modify Lock Screen system settings. This is not possible at the moment, but there is a petition to enable setting the wallpaper from an app here: http://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/110705-app-platform/suggestions/1720049-provide-a-wallpaper-api-to-enable-in-app-setting-o?ref=title
This combined with the ability to change the screen timeout (not possible yet) would achieve the desired effect.
I take it you are probably after custom screensaver with some other information on it and/or rendered/animated content. This wouldn't make sense. The whole point of the screen saver is to save the screen.
There is no better way to save the screen than to turn it off, which mobile devices handle pretty well.
You can't do either. Windows Phone does not support inspecting the users activity or anything else that goes beyond the boundary of a 3rd party application's own domain.
The background agents are limited to the application that created them, and the data related to that (in it's isolated storage).
And this is a good thing, since it means creating mal- and spyware is a lot more difficult. Also, a application like you're attempting to make, would principally be considered spyware.
Related
My requirement is, I have an app that is running in the background and is not having the focus. The user might be using some other applications, and based on certain events in my app, I want the screen reader to announce the text based on my liking. I dont want my app to get the focus, user should be able to continue with the other application, I just want screen reader to announce some texts. I already tried sending QAccessibleEvent with different Events like Alert, NameChanged, ObjectShow etc. But I think since my app is not in focus, it may not be passing through. Could it be possible to achieve my requirement without my app getting focus? Thank you. I am using Qt 5.15 with Windows 10
One possible solution is to directly call screen reader specific API.
However, if you are presenting some text on screen as well, you should rather preferably use the so called toasts, or the notification system, if it's suited to your application.
QT probably provides access to them.
Just in case, I'm the author of a DLL that allows to make several screen readers speak text.
Note that it doesn't show anything on screen.
http://github.com/qtnc/UniversalSpeech
Well, the title almost says it all : Why should I not move a GUI (e.g. Gtk) window on screen from the code ? In Gtk 3 there was an API for moving windows on screen, but it was removed in Gtk 4, because it is not good to move a window from code; only the user should do so (don't ask me to provide sources for that, I read it somewhere but have forgotten where and cannot find it). But I cannot think of any reason why it shouldn't be good, but of several reasons why it could be good, for example to restore the position of a window between application restarts. Could you please shed some light on this ?
The major reason why is that it can't possibly work cross-platform, so it is broken API by definition. That’s also why it was removed in GTK4. For example: this is impossible to implement when running on top of a Wayland session, since the protocol doesn't allow getting/setting global coordinates. If you still want to have something similar working, you'll have to call the specific platform API (for example, X11) for those platforms that you want to support.
On the reason why it’s not supported by some display protocols: it’s bad for UX and security. In terms of UX: some compositors can have special behavior because they need to work on a small device, or because they have a kiosk mode in which everything should always run fullscreen, or they provide a tiling experience. Applications positioning their windows themselves then tend to give unexpected behaviour. In terms of security: if you allow this, it’s technically possible for an application to reposition and resize itself so that it covers your screens while making itself transparent, without it being noticeable, which means it has the possibility of scraping all input.
I am trying to setup individual window sharing for a project in Unity for Windows. The way I'm currently going about doing this is by using EnumWindows(), IsVisableWindow(), and GetWindowText() to create a dictionary of window titles and handles, then calling StartScreeCapturebyWindowId() to share the selected window.
This works relatively well for most process; the window of the process and only the window of the process is streamed. However, for certain programs (like Google Chrome, Discord, and Windows Photos) the captured area is set correctly, but overlapping windows are not culled out.
Does anyone know what could be causing this problem? Is there something wrong with the way I'm grabbing the handles for these windows? Or is there something about starting a screen capture that I am missing?
You certainly did the correct things. However, you also hit the limitation to the Windows part of the SDK. To understand this better, the set of programs are UWP applications. They have different ways to share the visible pixels. Previously version of Agora SDK could not even show the window. Starting from 3.0.1, the SDK uses Rectangle cutting method to get the window display. You may further read the online documentation about that API here.
There isn't much Agora can do for the near term. So you will just need to deal with the user experience (e.g. by warning them) or look at solutions like using Web SDK instead.
I am debating whether to hide or not to hide the system tray in a Windows Phone 7 application. I've not found any general suggestions on this issue -the official Windows Phone design guidelines don't address this issue at all - except for Jeff Wilcox's blog post who suggested that he personally likes to see the system tray in applications. I'd like some general advice on this issue from other Windows Phone developers.
Some reasons for showing the system tray are
Doesn't take up that much space
Users may want to see it at times
Reasons for hiding it are
You can't control its background: unless you're using PhoneBackgroundBrush as the background the top row will stand out
Lots of widely used / official apps already hide it: all games as well as the official Facebook and Twitter app.
I'd appreciate all advice on this.
Transparency and colors are now possible with Mango by setting its BackgroundColor and Opacity :
shell:SystemTray.IsVisible="True"
shell:SystemTray.BackgroundColor="Transparent"
shell:SystemTray.Opacity="0"
I would say by default show it unless it really gets in the way in a way you can't workaround, especially if its an app and not a game.
I would say it depends on the application/game you are writing
If the app needs a network connection or if you will be in the application for a long period of time show it so the user can keep an eye on network and battery.
If you need the extra screen space (for a game?), and you rarely need network hide it.
Or... I guess you leave it up-to the user and give them a setting to programatically hide/show it.
I think its best to use the tray in applications that are tools or utilities. Typically these users would prefer more info than less when they're using applications on the phone (battery, network, time).
Also adding the tray in there tends to make the application look more native on the phone (according to me and others I've asked), which is a big plus because the user associates your app as if it was built with the phone OS.
But if the application is a game, media, etc. type of application I recommend you take it off, especially on panorama because it takes away from the intended design. Also these types of applications focus on the content and seeing multiple little icons at the top can take away from the experience.
Really to me the space it occupies isn't really THAT much, so that shouldn't be too much of an issue. But rather the purpose of the app as stated above.
I do like the suggestions that have been given as far as giving the user the choice. Check out this code:
bool ShowTray;
//ASK USER WHAT THEY WANT
//ShowTray = true or false;
SystemTray.IsVisible = ShowTray;
I've been reluctantly hiding, at least on any view where I have a background image; otherwise it looks too strange to me. I've been considering a setting in my app that would allow the user to choose, and persisting that to isolated storage.
Also considering maybe having the top of the screen in phone background brush color and have it fade / blend into another color or background image. Not sure how well that would turn out but as long as it is not a cheesy looking gradient effect, perhaps.
I'm hoping eventually MS will soon add support for transparency in the system tray or otherwise help address this issue. As a user I wish that I could force the system tray to always be visible across all apps, but as a developer I realize that the visual effect often doesn't look good.
Perhaps if the community came up with a new UX metaphor where maybe double-tapping in the system tray area would toggle whether it is visible. A single tap could perhaps start to animate / pop / hint at the system tray...
As the title suggests...
Is it possible to add custom Data Detectors to Cocoa apps?
If so, a gentle nudge in the right direction would be great.
Note: To be clear. I want to add new detectors to currents apps. I am not writing a new app.
Thankyou
W
It's not even possible to build a custom data detector on anything but iOS 4. NSDataDetector is only available on iOS 4 and above.
If they existed on OS X and were a plug-in class like Spotlight importers, that'd be a nice feature. Perhaps filing a request at bugreport.apple.com would help it along?
Later update
I think the reason this hasn't been opened up with an API is because they're only meant to find common data (contact info, dates, URLs) for which there is only one (or just a few) uses. That is, contact info can be stored or used in "the" system-designated app. URLs can be auto-highlighted so they're linkable (clicks invoke the system-designated handler - Safari, an app registered to a protocol, etc.). But there's only one direction to funnel those actions and the endpoint is always a major "convenience app" meant to manage this common information (contacts, calendar, browser, email app, phone app...)
On the other hand, consider app-specific information. Data formatted a certain way for use with one app or platform might mean something else entirely to another application. In fact, this is rather common. So what happens when a string like %%SOMESTRING%% is detected? To one app, it might be a placeholder token. To another, it might be a user name. To another still, it might be interpreted as %%USERNAME followed by %%. Suddenly the simple system-wide UI for handling basic data types has to account for multiple actions and/or multiple "data detector plugins" claiming all or part of a format.
I'm not sure we'll ever see custom data detector APIs on iOS or Mac for this reason alone.
While custom data detectors aren't available at the OS level, there is a mechanism that will get you almost there. One possibility is to create a Workflow in Automator and save it in the Services menu.
It can be configured to be active when text is highlighted. You'd either go to the current app's main menu and select the Workflow under "Services", or else right click on the text and go to the "Services" menu from there. Not as easy as clicking on the text as you would a URL, but pretty close.
Create a workflow in Automator on Mac