What features can I look forward to in Windows 7 that will:
Make my job easier as a developer.
or...
Make my job "different"(harder) as a developer.
I've been hearing a lot about performance improvements and a few UI effect enhancements, but nothing really about what development on Windows 7 will be like. Thanks.
Following are areas that are new:
multi touch API for developing touch based applications
new concept of 'libraries' for storing user specific data (similar to mydocuments)
Enhanced support for GPS and other such hardware
Office2007 Ribbon like user interface
Refer to http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/developers/default.aspx for details.
The new sensors API will make your job easier, provided Microsoft can get enough people on-board with it. It should provide you a standard way to interface with things like GPS and light sensors, if you program with that kind of thing.
Very east to use and seamless Virtual PC is great for debugging and testing.
Touch is another new capability.
Feature list from Wikipedia.
To answer your actual question:
I don't think any of them are aimed at developers explicitly (such a tiny niche really).
For the begged "Features to use in apps" question:
I'd like to see lots of search extenders, jump lists, and those little "preview shortcut" button things (I have no idea what they're called).
Microsoft publishes an official Windows 7 Developer Guide.
Related
Maybe I have't looked hard enough, but I spent yesterday googling for a bit and found no relevant projects on hacking the DJI Phantom Drone in order to create new coordinating apps. This is besides the app for coordination DJI currently uses for their drone. I'm trying to see if there's a way to communicate with the Drone with a specific protocol in order to accept a set of procedures.
Any help would be awesome,
Thanks.
Great News for you and all us Droneys! DJI has launched their SDK since you asked this question. They released it last November and you can now apply for a license and write your own apps for the Phantom2 Vision+ using their SDK.
Check it out at https://developer.dji.com/
I am already building a project using the SDK - you can follow my progress on my blog / product site. I will also try to update it with good DJI related development links and tips.
This post is old but I think it is good to leave a foot print for others :)
There is this new company called NVdrones, which created a peace of hardware that you can attach to any drone (you need physical access to the flight controller), and once you do that you can use their SDK (Arduino, Java, Android and Javascript) to write your app without the need of hacking, soldering or anything else. It is just plug and play.
Another benefit is that you are not locked with a specific drone (DJI SDK or 3DRobotics SDK), you can use the board on anything you want. Which gives lots of flexibility.
The developer site is http://developers.NVdrones.com
Hope this helps.
This is a great topic!
You could check how to hack your copter here: https://github.com/flyver/Flyver-SDK/wiki/-2.2--How-To:-Flyver-Hack-a-Copter
By opening the drone, taking out the original controller, soldering a few wires and sticking an Android phone to it, you will have the ability to program your Phantom in a modern manner with an open source SDK and application based development. This means that you could add computer vision to it, automation or additional hardware. You could also use smartphones, web and other interactive devices for remote controlling the copter instead of using the standard remote controls.
The Phantom, however, is offcenter balanced due to the fact that most people use gimbal with it. Without the gimbal is a lot less stable from my experiments so you will have to put some extra work in center balancing it.
I have made one windows phone based application. i want some designing ideas from you wp7 people.how can we apply styles,transparent background or the design which suits wp7 app. may i have some links which provides snaps for good designed apps. please help
One app that jumps to my mind when talking about great use and adaption to the metro design, it's "Cocktail Flow". It has very well done implementations of many design cues for WP7. As special treats it has features like parallax effects controled via gyroscope.
You can find a free version on the marketplace. Definitely worth a look.
MSDN user experience guidelines are pretty good, User Experience Design Guidelines for Windows Phone.
Also, it helps to install some popular apps from the marketplace and study their design.
The BEST thing you can possibly do to get a good idea of how to build a great WP7 app is to own a Windows Phone, and use it as your primary phone.
Get used to the way the operating system flows. Download cool apps. As time goes on you begin to understand from the user's perspective what a "good" app looks (and more importantly) feels like. It's a hard thing to nail down in a "user experience" spec. I find that a lot of people who set off to build a WP7 app do so before understanding how apps are supposed to behave on the platform. It is vital that you understand how users expect applications on the windows phone to operate. If you use a windows phone for a good 3-4 months, and really make an effort of butting it through the steps, it will be hard to walk away from that experience without a very clear idea of what a "good" application looks like for the windows phone.
That being said, and while I honestly don't believe that there are any short cuts to good design for the windows phone, I highly recommend downloading the following apps, and playing around with them to get a feel for "good" UI:
Wordament
Cocktail Flow (previously mentioned)
Twitter
Spotify
Yelp
Any of the built in applications (Office, Zune, Internet Explorer)
The above are good to start with, but again, you're really not going to understand it unless you live and breath it everyday for at least a few months.
What Windows Phone 7 demo/reference applications have you seen which really made you interested in developing for the platform?
I know of Scott Gu's Twitter example and Foursquare. Also see here for MIX10 demo apps.
Other than developing games and re-creating functionality already present on other mobile platforms (iPhone, BlackBerry, Android), is there any good reference material and business benefits of developing for Windows Phone 7? Does the Silverlight dev environment really offer an advantage over what is already out there? My gut feeling is that this is definitely the case, but it will take some time for the platform to establish itself, if it does.
You can find a lot of examples and reference applications here www.reddit.com/r/wp7dev/ or search using the hashtag #wp7dev on twitter (full disclosure - some of my examples appear there).
There a examples of what people are openly working on, but one can assume it is a lot more - hopefully this is useful, as it shows what can be done, or is being done on the platform.
As a novice developer, other phone platforms came with a lot of overhead required to build even the simplest application. The fact that XNA will be available for game development is a huge thing for me, it means I can create simple games for me and my friends without having to spend time learning a new language or setting up awkward SDK's and deployment settings.
More advanced developers may scoff at that, but development tools that are already being used that can work right out of the box for the intended platform is important for the hobbyists. I think this will open up a huge arena for homemade games and apps just like XNA did for 360 development.
It should also help sales. I will buy a Windows 7 phone because of this, and I can imagine others will do the same. As it stands, I am going to port my existing XNA games over so I can play them on the go. It will be cool to show people at the office, airport, etc. projects I have made right on the spot, and even give them the option to play if they have the right hardware.
I am about to start developing a desktop application, and I am interested in making the application both usable and accessible for end users. Can anyone suggest online resources that offer guidance for developing usable desktop applications? In particular, I would be interested in learning about how to test desktop applications for usability. I am aware of several tools to validate HTML for accessibility; how could you test a desktop application for accessibility?
Thanks, MagicAndi.
I read through the entire Introduction to Apple Human Interface Guidelines, and it was not to my loss. Rumor has it that similar guidelines for MS Windows and Gnome are excellent, too, but I haven't read those.
Wikipedia has interesting pointers to usability. The single best (short) piece of literature I've seen on usability is "Don't make me think" by Steven Krug, with a focus on Web Usability.
As for Accessibility, I haven't read through all of it, but from small exerpts I blieve that real experts have written WIA-ARIA, the W3C take on accessibility.
I forgot where, but these are hints I've learned on how to test for accessibility:
Buy a screenreader and try to use your app with that
Put on glasses that are not yours (or take yours off) and find your way through the app
Try to handle the your App with an imprecise substitute for a mouse, to simulate disabilities of the hand. E.g., try using your app with a trackball, or with a mouse on a reflecting surface.
Turn the sound very silent or off
Use your app with one hand only.
Set your screen to black and white (to check that contrast suffices)
That's all I can come up with now.
I can answer from a MS centric point of view, although some of the tools mentioned should work for other languages that run under Windows.
First there are two open source options on CodePlex that you can run against your applications to verify that you have the building blocks in place for accessibility AccChecker and UI Automation Verify.
You should also use a screen reader to verify your accessibility, in my experience a good one that works with Windows and WPF applications is NVDA Screen Reader.
For measuring luminosity ratios of UI elements I like Colour Contrast Analyzer v 2.2
Microsoft also provides guidance with their Accessibility Labs and Sarah Ford has a really good article providing a great overview of accessibility testing http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms971307.aspx
I will start new PDA project on the windows mobile and compact framework 2.0 or higher.
I need to design the new application user interface like IPhone, it should be smilar IPhone buttons, gradiend screens, colors, some thing like this. It seems i need to many images and backgrounds on the windows mobile application for achieving this.
I don't need to use default pocketpc UI elements, it's not useful for my project and me.
I need your some suggestions about the new pocketpc app user interface design.
Could you please share me your ideas or suggestions ?
Have a look at:
http://fluid.codeplex.com/
and
http://www.beemobile4.net/
This CodeProject article will be of interest for you (iPhone UI in Windows Mobile). You may also want to look into UI Framework for .NET Compact Framework 3.5 (MSDN article describing some of the features).
I feel your pain. Worse yet, I use Win32 and C/C++ for my WM apps, which none of the listed UI libraries even support.
The end result is that unless you buy UI components from someone else for this platform, then you will unfortunately have to write your own UI controls. I had to do just that myself. :/
There is more info here.
I took a look at all these options, Fluid looks nice but the complexity of the code put me off. I've gone with a very basic approach (which fits my current needs) and I've written an ImageButton control
I'll add a vote for Resco. I been working with .NET for years but don't have any mobile or C++ experience. The Resco controls are not cheap but they made it vastly easier and cut my dev time by at least 50% and probably a lot more. In the scale of things the cost is nothing compared to developer wages and missed deadlines. No affiliation - just a happy customer :)
Also check out the Resco Toolkit