I am working with a client on an enterprise Win8 app that is for order taking. They have a specific page that they require to be only in Portrait mode while the rest of the app can support any orientation. Since I've done so much Windows Phone 7/8 work I thought this would be simple. Just specify the value on the Page. But this didn't work…

Today Microsoft is finally releasing the new Windows Phone 8 SDK. As I've been updating my Windows Phone book for this new incarnation of the device, I am excited that the SDK is finally going to be available for public consumption.

I got into a longish, public discussion last night about XAML versus the HTML/CSS stack last night. I think they both have merit and pros and cons but it made me decide to add a short series of posts that highlight some of the CSS things that surprised me most (like my JavaScript for the C# Guy posts - and yes, more of those are coming too).

So I've done it again.  I survived another 30 minutes with Woody and Keith. Whew. We had a good conversation about the current state of Web Development and the future of XAML development.

A lot has been made since a report from Microsoft late last week (http://shawnw.me/HPEh0R) that seemed to say that Silverlight on the phone was going away in Windows Phone 8 (Apollo). I liked a lot of what this article had to say (from e-week):

I saw a tip by Tim Heuer on a StackOverflow question about how to show binding errors in the Output window of managed WinRT (e.g. Metro-style) XAML projects. Tim mentioned that:

If you're a XAML developer and have proudly stated that you hand-code all your markup, it’s time to learn how to be more productive. I’ve authored a new course for PluralSight. If you have a subscription, you can view it my new “Blend for Developers” course now:

Url: http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?ShowNum...

Url: http://blogs.msdn.com/mswanson/archive/2009/01/...

I've been digging into some of the open source and 3rd party controls that are becoming available for Silverlight 2. While running into some odd issues with some of them it occurred to me that there are some design guidelines that haven't been well communicated. Back in the early days of WPF I learned (though exactly where is unclear) that every control should support an empty constructor and that all properties (e.g. XAML Attributes) should have a default value. I knew this to be true but I couldn't document where it came from.

I use ListBox's and DataTemplates a lot to show data in different ways in WPF. One of the problems I've faced is how to change the look of the "Selected" element. All the examples I could find assumed you were not using a DataTemplate.  Luckily Chris Sells came to my rescue and pointed me at the ItemContainerStyle.  Using a Template for the ListBoxItem in the ItemContainerStyle let me control the look and feel of the Selected element (or disabled items) easily.

Url: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510381/

Url: http://www.codeplex.com/reflectoraddins/Release...

Url: http://www.interfacett.com/wpfe/eggtimer/defaul...