Zubair

Recently I received an email from Telerik inviting me to try their
new Rad controls for Windows 8 applications, for past few days I used some of these and in this post we’re going to take a look at two of them.
First download them from Telerik.com. After installation, a Rad Controls for Windows 8 section will appear in your toolbox.

Using Rad Controls for Windows 8 in C# and XAML Windows Store app

Lets drag and drop RadHubTile from the toolbox to the designer and set some properties, this control allows you to use an image as a Tile. I have a created a new Windows Store app in C# and XAML, here’s the markup for the RadHubTile control

<telerik:RadHubTile HorizontalAlignment="Left" 

Margin="76,95,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="152" 

ImageSource="Assets/Profile.jpg"/>

Now do a Ctrl+F5 and see that the image appears as clickable Tile, pretty simple huh?

Lets look at the slightly more customizable RadSlideHubTile control that lets you specify Top and Bottom content that changes just like Tiles on your Windows 8 Home screen, here’s the XAML

<telerik:RadSlideHubTile HorizontalAlignment="Left" 

Margin="47,59,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top">

 <telerik:RadSlideHubTile.TopContent>

  <TextBlock FontWeight="Light" FontSize="22" HorizontalAlignment="Left" 

   Margin="12,12,12,12" Text="Zubair" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" TextWrapping="Wrap"/>

 </telerik:RadSlideHubTile.TopContent>

 <telerik:RadSlideHubTile.BottomContent>

  <Image Source="/Assets/Profile.jpg" Stretch="UniformToFill"></Image>

 </telerik:RadSlideHubTile.BottomContent>

</telerik:RadSlideHubTile>

One thing I really like about Rad controls for Windows 8 is their excellent

design-time support in Visual Studio 2012, you can see that my

RadSlideHubTile now shows changes in the designer.

So there you have it, a quick look at the Rad Controls for Windows 8,

after you install the package you can find the complete samples in 
<drive>:\Program Files (x86)\Telerik\RadControls for Windows 8 XAML Q3

2012\Demos try them yourself and let me know what you think.

Found this poster for the new features in .NET 4.5 from Jouni’s blog so decided to share

I was invited by Microsoft Gulf to speak at Windows 8 Developer Boot Camp in Dubai, I spoke about some of the new features to build Windows 8 style apps including Search and Share Contracts, building fast and fluid apps with new Async support in C#.

I also talked about my open source Windows 8 RSS Reader app and showed few code examples from it. You can download the full source from Codeplex.com

Links to slides, photos and video are available below

Presentation on Tools for Building Windows 8 style apps VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

It was a very interactive session with question from audience throughout the demo.

You can watch the video recording of the entire event on the Microsoft Gulf Community blog

Update: Watch the recording of my talk below [54mins]

Around mid last year I was invited by my friend Hammad Rajjoub to be the technical reviewer of the Windows Server AppFabric Cookbook that he was co-authoring with Connected Systems MVP Rick Garibay. I am glad to tell you that the book is now published and is coming to stores near you and in addition to that you can order it online on Amazon, Amazon UK, B&N.

This is not a long post that talks about every aspect of the book because the authors have done a great job explaining the details but as a technical reviewer of the book I just want to tell you that if you are a .NET developer,Team Lead or Software Architect and are considering or using Windows Server AppFabric’s Caching, WCF and Workflow capabilities in your enterprise than this book is for you, the book is written in the recipe-format so its not going to waste your time but leave you with just the information that you need.

Click to the authors blogs below for full details of the book.

• Hammad Rajjoub on Windows Server AppFabric Cookbook has been published
• Rick Garibay on Windows Server AppFabric Cookbook is Out!
• My co-reviewer Adnan Masood on Microsoft Windows Server AppFabric Cookbook is out!

Or order the book on PacktPub right now.

If you are building a Metro app for Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 cannot create the application package due to invalid or expired certificate then here is what you need to do.

Double-click Package.appxmanifest file in Solution Explorer and go to the Packaging tab, click Choose Certificate.. then from the dropdown choose Create test certificate…

Enter the new certificate details, and click OK.

You can now create your application package for distributions.