Mobility, from a PC point of view!

Let’s be honest shall we? The Apple iPad is a cool gadget; it is very good for the simple stuff that can be difficult to do on a mobile. However, it is expensive & not a real PC! So I went out looking for a tablet PC and lucky me my office had a spare one, l asked for it and took it

I was very happy in the first few hours, using the stylus on Windows Vista and navigating through the internet. Few hours later, I decided to install Windows 7, the installation was smooth and it automatically found all of my hardware and drivers.

Few days later, I was very annoyed because the device is not optimized for touch! In Internet Explorer you cannot grab the page and move it to scroll like on a mobile device. I always had to use the scroll bar which is annoying. The buttons were small for finger usage.

After few hours of search, I was able to optimize my tablet for touch. And here is what I have done.

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Diving into Licensing Class of Windows Phone 7

If you are building applications for Windows Phone 7 Marketplace you will love this.

It has never been easier to make a trial version of your application. A class provided my Microsoft makes it easier for us developers to build trial versions of our application in a very easy way.

On MSDN, Microsoft has documented a simple class which when calling it’s method IsTrial() the return value is a boolean expression which returns true if it is operating on Trial Mode and false if it is the full version.

The implementation should be like this.

Microsoft.Phone.License.LicenseInfo MyLicenseInfo = new Microsoft.Phone.License.LicenseInfo();
if (MyLicenseInfo.IsTrial())
{
// Do the limitation here
}

Find the Documentation here

Pinch to Zoom on Resistive screens for Opera Mobile

It has been a while since i released the beta version of Dual Touch SDK. It seems that my SDK have inspired some talented people to incorporate the idea (not the SDK, they are using their own algorithm so i take no credit) into Opera Mobile.

This is the reasion why i love Windows Mobile, it is so flexible that you can do whatever you want with this platform. I’m sure most of us will miss it when it’s gone. However, i’m sure the next generation Windows Phone 7 will be as Awesome as the current version if not more.

I’ll leave you with the video of the Pinch to Zoom on Opera Mobile.

Source XDA-Developers

Windows Phone 7, 3D Calc on Codeplex

It has been very difficult to build animations on older Windows Phones, now it is very easy.

During the Community Launch of Visual Studio, I demoed how to build 3D animations for Windows Phone 7, I also posted some articles that will help you start (access Part I and Part II).

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Taking care of your Windows Phone Battery

Batteries has always been the bottleneck of smart phones, specially the ones with huge touch screens. Today, I’m going to give you some tips to enhance your battery life of your Windows phone, increase it’s lifetime and make it last longer (continue reading…)

Windows Phone 7, Animations Part II

Previously in Part I of this article, you saw how to rotate objects over multiple axis. However, this approach only allows the user to see the end result. Here in the second part we will discuss how to make the objects on screen to animate and give the application user a smile.

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Windows Phone 7, Animations Part I

Most of us the developers didn’t know how to create graphically nice applications. and by nice i don’t mean good looking and using themes and skins but i mean animations and some objects animations, My self included!

It was very difficult to create graphically nice animations that utilizes the GPU and ensures smooth animations so we found our selves trying to learn OpenGL/ES or any other SDKs like Fluid or SilverMoon which all are complicated enough and can waste a lot of time learning them. (continue reading…)

Dot Net Compact Framework Forum

I have been receiving a lot of questions by email and through the comments. Unfortunately i cannot answer all of you at the same time so i created a new forum in our forum section (which can be accessed from the top menu) which is only for Dot net Compact Framework. In this forum, you can post your questions and i will do my best to help you out, also feel free to participate in the conversations and help others if you know the answer to their questions.

I would like to ask you all who haven’t got their questions answered by me to post it in the forum, it is going to be our Knowledge Base, where we can share experience and seek help.

Let’s work as one community and help each other.

Thank you All

Regards

Celebrating VS2010, Community Launch

We are celebrating, The new Visual Studio 2010 is here and with it communities in Riyadh (including us) are throwing a very nice event. The event is going to take place on Tuesday, May 4th 2010 and starts on 9:00 AM until 5:00 PM.

If you live in Saudi Arabia, this is an event that you cannot afford to miss, we will be speaking Visual Studio (Yes, including Phones). Details below.

• Event Home Page
• Location : Al Yamama University (Map)
• GPS N 24.863938   E 46.594643
• Registeration
• Agenda
• Speakers

We hope to see you there.

Which phone to buy?

During the past few days, i have been receiving a lot of emails and messages from people asking me what phone to buy. Honestly, i have been in their shoes wondering should i get this one? or that one?

Let’s face it, Phones are very important devices in our lives (if not the most important ever!). Most of us use the phone for business and personal uses. We check email, Post on Twitter or Facebook, Text Message and make phone calls and much more stuff!

This is the time of smart-phones, so here is the first rule.

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