It’s a long time I was thinking to make a blog reader app for my blog kunal-chowdhury.com and finally it is now available in the Windows Phone store. Using this small app, you will be able to view the latest posts published in my blog.

 

Though the app is currently available for WP8 devices only, but I am going to push a downgraded version for WP7 devices very soon to the store.

Published by on under Windows Phone Apps | WP8

One of my app named “Easy Connect” for Windows Phone 7 is one of the most download app in the Windows Phone store, which is an utility application to give you easy access to all the four connection settings page i.e. Airplane, Bluetooth, Cellular and Wi-Fi from a single page.

 

In Windows Phone 8, we can see some other settings page which are easily accessible by APIs. Thus I thought to build similar app for WP8.

Published by on under DZone | Windows Phone Apps

It was the rainy morning when we started for the event. Few places already flooded due to heavy rain in the last night. Still we got a no. of attendees who came across to attend the 2nd C# Corner Jabalpur chapter event. Thanks to all of you who joined us.

 

In this post, I am sharing a recap of the event and the slides of the presenters for you who didn’t get chance to attend it.

Published by on under Events | Windows8

The big boss again hit you “Hey buddy, I don’t want to see those movement layers in the inserted table those you are using in the Silverlight application”. Now as a developer what to do? You are using the Telerik RadRichTextBox in the application that you are building. Does it provide the functionality?

 

Today’s blog post is on that topic and here we will discuss, how to hide the movement layer from the table and then show it back again on need basis.

Published by on under RadRichTextBox | Silverlight

It was a most demanding features by the Windows Phone community to include the Text-to-Speech engine in Windows Phone and the WPDevs who were missing it in Windows Phone 7 can now use this feature in their Windows Phone 8 applications.

 

The TTS engine is now available in WP8 devices which you can easily integrate in your app. This small post will describe how to use it.

Published by on under NokiaBlog | WP8

One of my friend, who bought a Windows Phone recently, asked me to build an app for him which will calculate bank’s interest rate. He is more into the investment market and this would really help him. I accepted the idea and built this app for him.

 

First I thought to keep it as private but later made it public so, others can also use it on need. It’s a free app which you can download from the Windows Phone store (link available below).

Published by on under DZone | NokiaBlog

Though it’s not the common practice in Windows Phone application development, but you may want to terminate your Application programmatically on some special occasions. These occasions may vary in different cases.

 

In this post, we will learn how to kill the application programmatically so that, it should not reside in the memory unnecessarily when user hits back to come out from the application.

Published by on under NokiaBlog | Tips

It was not as smooth as I thought while installing the Windows 8.1 as a fresh OS in my laptop. Though the OS and other major software installation was smooth, but I faced lots of issues while installing some software's that need .NET Framework 3.5.

 

Did lots of analysis, tried various methods to install the framework but all failed. At the end I got an perfect solution which resolved the problem. Thought to share in case you faced similar, will help you.

Published by on under .Net | Tips

It’s time again to share the happiest moment of my life with you, my friends and my blog’s readers. It’s the afternoon time when I came to know that, I have been awarded as “C# Corner MVP (Most Valuable Professional) 2013” for my contribution towards the C-SharpCorner community.

 

It was an wonderful moment when I saw my name between the 25 new MVPs awarded in this quarter. Congratulation to all the other MVPs for getting this recognition.

Published by on under Achievements | Awards

If you are a Silverlight developer and working with Telerik’s Rad control library, you might have seen that the RadNumericUpDown control always displays the value with a comma separator as per your system’s locale settings.

 

But have you ever came to a situation where your client wants to remove the comma separator from the control? You will not find any properties in-built in it. Let’s start today’s discussion with it.

Published by on under Silverlight | Telerik

During the BUILD developer conference on 26th June 2013, Steve Ballmer announced the availability of Microsoft Windows 8.1 Preview and Windows 8.1 RT Preview. If you have Windows 8 PC, you can download an ISO image and install it from there. But if you have a Surface tablet, the process is different.

 

If you are using Surface RT and want to install Windows 8.1 RT Preview, this post will help you getting started. Make sure that you don’t have any language pack installed.

Published by on under Surface | Win8

Yesterday in BUILD 2013 conference, Microsoft announced the availability of Windows 8.1 Preview which is now available for download as ISO image as well as an update from Windows Store. Windows RT devices have to update it from Windows Store only.

 

But before downloading and installing the latest preview build, you must know the pitfalls about it. In this post I am going to share some points for you. So, think before installing it now.

Published by on under Win8 | Windows

It’s definitely a busy day today when Microsoft started releasing multiple products during the BUILD conference happening in San Francisco. On 26th June 2013, Microsoft announced the availability of the first preview version of Visual Studio 2013 along with Windows 8.1 Preview.

 

In this post, you will find the link to download Visual Studio 2013 in case you want to try it before Microsoft actually releases the final product by end of the year probably.

Published by on under News | Visual Studio 2013

On 26th June 2013, during the BUILD Conference in San Francisco, Steve Ballmer announced the availability of the first official release of Windows 8.1 Preview. Windows 8.1 Preview and Windows RT 8.1 Preview are pre-release versions of Windows 8.1.

 

As it is a preview release and if you want to try the preview version, please make sure to read the post before starting the installation. Download links are available in this post for your reference.

Published by on under News | Surface

After the release of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 in April 2013, Microsoft just released the next RTM version of Visual Studio 2012 marked as Update 3 (26th June 2013). This includes the latest cumulative series of feature additions and bug fixes.

 

It also includes Team Foundation Server 2012 Update 3. If you are waiting for the final release of Update 3, it’s the time to update your IDE with latest set of features & fixes.

Published by on under News | VisualStudio

Developers always try to provide the user a easiest way to represent the data irrespective of the technology that has been used. Hence, for a huge collection of data, generally we provide “AutoComplete TextBox” to the user instead of ComboBox or ListBox.

 

The reason behind this is to provide searchable and filterable UI to the user for easy access. Today in this post, we will learn how to use the Telerik’s RadAutoCompleteBox in both Silverlight and Windows Phone.

Published by on under Silverlight | Telerik

Majority of the developers uses source control server as their project’s repository. SVN and TFS (Team Foundation Server) are one of them. If you are one of the user, you are already familiar with the Check-In and Check-Out process that we do from Team Explorer.

 

In some case, you may need to do the same from command prompt. Today, this post will cover how to Check-Out and Check-In files/folders from command prompts.

Published by on under TFS | Tips

If you are a phone application developer, you may want to integrate vibration in your application, so that, you can vibrate the phone programmatically to provide some message to the end user silently in some special occasion.

 

Today in this post, we will learn how to programmatically vibrate your Windows Phone device by learning the SDK API details. Continue learning and provide your feedback.

Published by on under WP7 | WP7DEV

As a developer we all write lots of code, we all try to write better code in our module and want to keep away those freaking bugs that pops up by the testers. Isn’t it? Then what is the need of doing a code review and spending those extra time for just a review process?

 

Whole day everyone is busy with their module, so who has the time for this unnecessary work? Is it really unnecessary? Let’s check it out in today’s blog post. I hope, you are excited to read it.

Published by on under Code Review | DZone

Learning never ends, everyday we learn at least one thing. This applies to both our personal and programming stuffs. Today I learnt coding stuff which I wanted to build in one of my application. Thought to share the same in case you need, this will help you.

 

Did you ever think about building an application to provide a directory or file search functionality to the end user? .NET provides you that APIs which we will discuss in this post today.

Published by on under .Net | CSharp

Let’s suppose you built an application which loads records in a Grid in a paginated manner. But when you loaded thousands of records, you noticed that, it is taking more time to load than the expected time and your boss was not happy with that.

 

So, what to do? Are there any kind of proper solutions or workarounds to reduce this load time? If so, what are those? Let’s began with our post with a problem statement.

Published by on under .Net | Silverlight

It was the hot, sunny morning when we reached the venue for giving a seminar on Windows 8 Store application development as part of C# Corner Jabalpur Chapter. As it was a “Windows 8 Developers Day”, we had two speakers (including me) demonstrating various path of development.

 

As it was the first event there, we expected very little crowd and there were 12 people joined it and I can say that, it was a great success. I hope to see more crowd in coming days.

Published by on under Events | Windows

Today, Microsoft announces about Outlook 2013 RT which will come with Windows 8.1 (earlier known as Windows Blue). This will come installed for free on all new Windows RT devices like Surface. As Windows 8.1 will be an free upgrade, you will get the Outlook RT with this update.

 

To know more about Outlook RT announcement, check out the complete post. I am also embedding a video which will give you first glance to Windows 8.1.

Published by on under Office | Office 2013

Numeric control is not new and all of us already experienced it in various applications and websites. Telerik also has this control in all of their control libraries but was missing in Windows 8 for XAML library. Recently they announced the beta release of 2013.Q2 for Windows 8.

 

In this post, we will start with this new control that’s first introduced with Q2 2013 release of Telerik’s RadControls for Windows 8 XAML and find out the common properties a developer needs.

Published by on under Telerik | Win8

Once you set up your TFS build server with an automated build, the big boss will ask you to publish the web project to the intermediate server each time a new build occurs. This might be for the testers to make sure that the code is working properly.

 

What to do? You analysed that, it will hamper your productivity. Isn’t it? Then what to do? Can we automate the build server to deploy the new code each time it succeeds? Let’s discuss it.

Published by on under TFS | Tips

Today while creating my first CI Build definition in the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, I noticed that, though the Silverlight 5 SDK is installed in the server, I was unable to run the build. It was throwing an error message that says “The Silverlight 4 SDK is not installed”.

 

The issue was not actually with the Silverlight SDK and I found the solution after lots of analysis. In this post, I am going to share it so that, if you come across the same issue, it will be helpful.

Published by on under Silverlight | TFS

Sometime we might want to navigate to a specific URL in LightSwitch application. That might be a web page URL or a direct URL to some file. If you are a Silverlight developer, you might know how to navigate to an URL but there are some trick in case of LightSwitch.

 

If you are looking for a piece of code to learn the mechanism and to include in your project, then this post will guide you step-by-step.

Published by on under LightSwitch | Silverlight

XAML namespace is an extension of XML namespace and conventionally written as “xmlns” in XAML pages. We use it on all XAML pages in Silverlight, Windows Phone, Windows 8, WPF related technologies to better reference assemblies and namespaces.

 

In this post we will learn more about this XMLNS namespace and the way to customize it for a cleaner XAML page. Interested to know it? Continue reading and share your feedback about the post.

Published by on under Silverlight | Win8

I just faced an issue with my Surface RT device. I was unable to turn on the device though it was completely charged. Though I had no idea about the issue but I was guessing about the Power Switch issue. Did a lot of stuffs, searching online etc. but nothing help.

 

Finally I tweeted about the issue and got a reply which helped me to turn on the device. If you came to this page just because your Surface is not turning on, this post will help you.

Published by on under Surface | Windows

It’s the sunny morning when I woke up from bed and opened my Surface to check the mails and tweets those I received while I was sleeping. In the collection of all unread mail, I noticed a mail with the subject line that says “Welcome to Nokia Developer Champion”.

 

At the very beginning I thought it as dream but now my dream comes true. Yes, I am now a Nokia Developer Champion from India and I am feeling very proud to announce it to you.

Published by on under Achievements | Awards

Last year we discussed “How to Capture a Screenshot as File in Windows 8?” which you will find useful in your desktop PC or laptop. You will also find that post useful in a Surface if you have a keyboard attached to it, because “Win + Print Screen” key combination is needed to capture the screen.

 

What about Microsoft Surface which does not have a keyboard attach to it? In that case, a touch keyboard will be require to press the keys but that will fill half of the screen.

Published by on under Surface | Win8

In the last post “What is Two-Factor Authentication?” we discussed about various factors of authentication system including different examples. We also learnt about Knowledge Factor, Inherence Factor and Possession Factor.

 

Microsoft recently added a second step authentication mechanism in all their accounts as an extra security layer. This post will guide you to turn ON/OFF this security layer.

Published by on under Security | Tips

Two-factor authentication is a user authentication system where an user needs to provide two different factors to authorize the user’s identity. It is not a new concept and in many places we are knowingly or unknowingly using it for secure access.

 

There could be multiple factors too and that known as Multi-factor authentication. Today in this post we will learn basics about this type of authentication system.

Published by on under Security | Tutorial

Sometime the Visual Studio’s clean project command does not return as expected and maximum time people used to manually delete the bin, obj, Client Bin, Generated_Code directories to clean all the traces of previous build.

 

Here I will share a small batch code which will help you to clean up those directories by just a single click. Tune it up if you want to add few more directories in the list.

Published by on under Tips | Tools

If you are a Win8Dev and building a Windows 8/WinRT application, you might want to download a file asynchronously from a web location. The job is very easy in Silverlight and in this case too but you just need to know the way, the APIs and the configuration settings.

 

Many developers already faced the difficulty to download a file in their WinRT apps and hence I thought to share the code with the API details in this post.

Published by on under Tutorial | Win8

One of my friend, Abhishek Sur (Microsoft MVP, Client App Dev), recently published a book titled "Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Expert Development Cookbook" covering basic usage of Visual Studio 2012 IDE, its various components and better utilization of the tool.

 

This post is just an announcement of the book and introduce you with the content of it. If you are willing to buy, find herewith the links of different store.

Published by on under .Net | Book

If you are using Telerik’s RadRichTextBox control in your Silverlight application, you might have noticed that the control exposes a format tool which pops up in the screen when you select some text inside the control. This is the same behaviour that you notice in Microsoft Word too.

 

But for some reason, you might want to hide that toolbar if you are building an application like notepad. This small post will cover the same for you.

Published by on under RadRichTextBox | Silverlight

These days Skype is a common platform for audio/video calling over internet. Many people uses it to connect with their family and beloved one, some other also uses it for business purpose to connect with their client.

 

Recently I noticed frequent crash in Skype and when tried to reopen, it was unable to login but was showing a message that I am already signed in to system. This post covers the solution to that.

Published by on under Skype | Tips

It’s just 10 days when Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 RTM was released and now again, Microsoft released their next update pack named “Update 3”. This release is currently available under CTP (Community Technology Preview) first release.

 

Find herewith more about this release i.e. list of changes and the link to download it. Keep in mind that, it’s a CTP release and not ready for production environment yet.

Published by on under News | VisualStudio

If you are working with the Telerik’s RadRichTextBox control for Silverlight, you might come to a situation where as per your business need you might have to customize the default context menu of the said control. If you are looking for an way to add or remove context menu group, this post will help you.

 

Continue reading the post to understand the way this context menu has been structured. Once you understand the basics, it will be easy for you to do further modifications.

Published by on under RadRichTextBox | Silverlight

As a WPDev, sometime we want to show a callout type information box or a notification popup within the Windows Phone application to the end user. Building such type of control needs a lot of effort before using that in an application.

 

Infragistics came up with their own control to help the Windows Phone developers to save their effort building it from the scratch. Today we are going to discuss it here with step-by-step code snippet.

Published by on under Infragistics | WP7

In your Silverlight application, you might want to detect whether network connection is available and then based on the result, you might want to do a service call or disable few buttons. This is a most wanted feature by the Silverlight developers.

 

So if you are looking for code, this post will help you to understand the APIs and integrate the same in your Silverlight applications.

Published by on under Silverlight | Silverlight5

Infragistics announces their NetAdvantage webinar series which will be held from 23rd April 2013 to 25th April 2013. The webinar series will cover most of their controls which includes Ignite UI, Windows Forms, XAML controls, NucliOS for iOS and Windows UI.

 

This post will cover a brief about the agenda and a link for you to register to the webinar series. As the seats for this webinar is limited, register for it now.

Published by on under Events | Infragistics

Just 2 months after the release of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 CTP release, Microsoft released the final version of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 which also includes a single Blend version that can be used to build apps for Silverlight, WPF, Windows Phone and Windows 8 Store etc.

 

The update is freely available for you to download from Microsoft site. I am going to share the direct link here for you to get easy access link.

Published by on under ExpressionBlend | News

Are you a Windows 8 Application Developer? Are you building an app like audio/video player or game which needs to keep the display active when user is inactive in the system? Then you came to a right place where we will discuss how to keep the display on while idle.

 

This post details about the Windows 8/Windows RT API usage and code snippet to request the system to keep the display on. Continue reading to know more about it.

Published by on under Win8 | Windows 8 Tips

Are you a Windows 8 or Windows RT user? Are you looking for a code to change your Windows 8 lock screen programmatically? Then this post will be definitely helpful for you. Just follow the simple steps to write an application by which you can change it easily.

 

Windows 8 already exposes settings panel to change the lock screen of the Windows, but this post will help you to programmatically access that using the exposed APIs.

Published by on under Win8 | Windows

Almost two years ago we discussed about “Microsoft.Phone.Info.DeviceStatus” class to retrieve Windows Phone device information in your application. In addition to those, there are some more APIs to fetch more details which is available as extended properties set.

 

Today in this post, we will learn about the API and the way to fetch those additional details in your application. Continue reading to know more about it.

Published by on under WP7 | WP7DEV

In the last blog post, we learnt “How to Share a Media File from WP8 using the ShareMediaTask?” which was a launcher available in Windows Phone 8 SDK. Similarly there are few more launchers available in the SDK by which you can launch WP8 specific applications programmatically.

 

Today in this blog post we will learn how to create an appointment in Windows Phone 8 using the API named “SaveAppointmentTask”. Continue reading for details.

Published by on under DZone | WP8

If you are a Windows Phone 8 application developer, you might want to implement a functionality to share a media (say, a picture) from your media library or camera library. So, how can you do that? Windows Phone 8 SDK provides you an API by which you can implement the same easily.

 

Today in this post, we will learn about the API and the implementation steps in a Windows Phone application. If you are looking for it, this will be an ideal solution for you.

Published by on under DZone | WP8