The C++ Ten Commandments

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This article presents a list of good practices for C++ development. Obviously there are many other good practices that one should adhere to and perhaps some of them are more important than the ones in this list. The following list is a personal recommendation and should be taken as is. Thou shalt follow the Rule … Read more

Lessons learned from trying PhoneGap\Cordova on Windows

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I am investigating using PhoneGap as a platform for building mobile apps for several operating systems including Android. While doing so I have ran into various issues, and this article is intended to help others avoid the same headaches (with a focus on Android). PhoneGap vs Cordova The PhoneGap installation documentation says you could install … Read more

CRT Refactored in Visual Studio “14”

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Visual Studio “14” CTP ships with a refactored C Runtime. The first thing you’ll notice is that msvcrXX.dll has been replaced by three new DLLs: appcrtXX.dll, desktopcrtXX.dll and vcruntimeXX.ddl (where XX stands for the version number so in this version it’s appcrt140.dll, desktopcrt140.dll and vcruntime140.dll). You can see in this image that both desktopcrt140.dll and … Read more

Per-project natvis files in Visual Studio “14”

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Visual Studio 2012 introduced a new framework for writing debugger visualizers for C++ types that replaced the old autoexp.dat file. The new framework offers xml syntax, better diagnostics, versioning and multiple file support. Visualizers are defined in XML files with extension .natvis. These visualizers are loaded each time the debugger starts. That means if you … Read more

Update MSF for Agile process template to use new features

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Visual Studio 2012 provides support for new features, such as code review and feedback through the use of the Work Item tracking system in TFS. (You can read more about it in this article New Code Review feature in Visual Studio 2012). However, to be able to use these features you must use a process … Read more

You Chemical Name – My First Windows Store App

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My first Windows Store app (for Window 8.1) is now available in Windows Store. It’s called Your Chemical Name and shows names (and text) using chemical elements symbols in the Breaking Bad style. The application allows to: customize the appearance of text, colors, background customize the position of the text on the background save image … Read more

Working with the Settings Charm for Windows 8.1 Store Applications

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Windows 8 features a Settings charm to display both application (the top part) and system (the bottom part) settings (you get it from swiping from the side of the screen). The system provides two entry points, Permissions and Rate and Review, the later only for applications installed through the store. You can customize the settings … Read more

Render the screen of a Windows Store App to a bitmap in Windows 8.1

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In WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone it is possible to render a visual object into a bitmap using the RenderTargetBitmap. This functionality, that I find pretty basic, was not available for Windows Store applications. Fortunately, Windows 8.1 provides that functionality for Windows Store applications too, through the same RenderTargetBitmap class. There are some limitations though: … Read more