Dotnet and WP7 Application Developments: Windows Phone 7

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Windows Phone 7 - Introduction

Introduction:
          Windows Phone 7(WP7) is the latest upcoming version of the Windows Mobile operating system developed by Microsoft. Microsoft's goal is to create an excellent user experience by redesigning the user interface, disallowing partners to modify or replace it, integrating the operating system with other services, and strictly controlling the hardware it runs on. Microsoft officially unveiled Windows Phone 7 during the Mobile World Congress 2010 (January 15) in Barcelona and revealed additional details at MIX 2010.

History
               Work towards a major Windows Mobile update began as early as 2004 under the project name Photon. Due to delays caused by mismanagement, the project was scrapped in 2008, and the Windows Mobile team - reorganized. Microsoft then started from scratch to make a new mobile platform, which became known as Windows Phone. Comparing to other mobile devices or other mobile OS, Windows phone provides you a good user interface to utilize it.
            Windows Phone was developed quickly. One result was that Windows Mobile applications do not run on it. Larry Lieberman, senior product manager for Microsoft's Mobile Developer Experience, told "If we'd had more time and resources, we may have been able to do something in terms of backward compatibility." Lieberman said that Microsoft was attempting to look at the mobile phone market in a new way, with the end user in mind as well as the enterprise network. Terry Myerson, corporate VP of Windows Phone engineering, said, "With the move to capacitive touch screens, away from the stylus, and the moves to some of the hardware choices we made for the Windows Phone 7 experience, we had to break application compatibility with Windows Mobile 6.5."

User Interface
   The thing UI in WP7 is very nice one to use it. Windows Phone 7 will have a new user interface called “Metro” (I will explain the metro UI in my next article). It looks similar to Zune HD’s interface. The home screen (called the "Start screen") is made up of "Tiles", which by default are links to important features, such as phone, music and videos, email, office, and contacts. The User can customize the tiles, delete them, or add their own - by pinning an application (or "experience"), media item, favorite contact, or almost anything to the Start screen, it becomes a tile. Tiles are dynamic and update in real time. Tile contents are organized via "hubs" which combine both local and online content. Windows Phone 7 will have a friendlier touch screen UI than previous Windows Mobile devices by using multi touch technology. Integration with popular social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Windows Live will be included. Windows Phone 7 also features integration with Xbox Live, Zune, and Bing services.

Limitations:
            The OS will not support copy & paste or multitasking for 3rd party applications at launch. Microsoft has stated that it will implement copy and paste, multitasking, and other features in future releases via Windows Phone Update. In an interview, Microsoft stated that they are well aware of the limitations in the initial version of Windows Phone 7, and that they plan to integrate these features when they are complete.

Internet Explorer for Windows Phone 7
            Andy Lees, Microsoft's senior vice president of mobile communications, confirmed in an interview that the version of Internet Explorer Mobile on Windows Phone 7 would not support Adobe Flash at launch, citing “performance reasons”. Later, Adobe Systems released a statement to clarify, saying "developing Flash for Windows Phone 7 (and Adobe) has been deeply involved with Microsoft”.(UPDATE: Adobe are 100% sure that there will be Flash for Windows Phone 7, but not at the launch. He also stated that the browser is "halfway between IE7 and IE8 rendering engine“. Its web browser will be a modified version of Internet Explorer 7, rather than being based on the current IE8. In addition, Microsoft's Silverlight technology will not work from within the Internet Explorer web browser.
From Microsoft plan to regularly update IE Mobile independently from the "Windows Phone Update" system, meaning the browser will be able to automatically update itself and the layout engine.

Software and OS Updates:
           According to Microsoft, software updates will be delivered to Windows Phone users via Microsoft Update, as they are for desktop Windows users. The software component, called Windows Phone Update, exists both on the phone (for smaller updates, over-the-air) and in the Zune PC software (for larger updates, via USB connection). Users will be notified to attach their phones to a PC if such an update is required.
Unlike with Windows Mobile, Microsoft plans to use the update process and functionality in Windows Phone 7 effectively. Microsoft has talked about the idea of "Delighters" - updates that will be regularly rolled out over time to extend the platform in unique and interesting ways.

Windows Phone 7 Development and Distributing:
            Windows Phone 7 applications will be based on Silverlight, XNA and .NET Compact Framework. Windows Phone 7 will only run applications that have first been approved by Microsoft and made available via the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Conclusion:
             So phones are officially computers that happen to fit in your pocket and Windows Phone 7 is almost everything anyone has ever dreamed of in a phone.

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Introduction to Dotnet

.NET framework is an essential component of the windows operating system and helps create applications by integrating different programming languages, such as Visual C#, Visual Basic, Visual C++, and so on. .NET Framework consists of a virtual execution syatem called the common language runtime(CLR) and a set of class libraries. CLR is a Microsoft product of the Common Language Infrastructure(CLI), which is an industrial standard and a basis for creating execution and development environmentss in which languages and libraries work together. Microsoft introduced .NET to bridge the gap and ensure interoperability between application created in different languages. .NET framework is used to integrate the business logic of an application implemented in different programming languages and services. Consequently, it induces significant improvements in code reusability, code specialization, resource management, development of applications in multiple programming languages, security, deployment, and administration of programs developed in multiple programming languages..

Why .NET?

Why .NET? Mainly .NET is the competitor for JAVA. . Its an environment or platform. It contains collection of services for application development and application execution. It supports different type of applications development. ex: CUI, GUI, console, web based,mobile applications Main thing is .NET is network & Internet based application development.It provides a good development environment. ex: Drag and Drop design - IntelliSense features - Syntax highlighting and auto-syntax checking - Excellent debugging tools - Integration with version control software such as Visual Source Safe (VSS) - Easy project management

Flavors of .NET:

Contrary to general belief .NET is not a single technology. Rather it is a set of technologies that work together seamlessly to solve your business problems. The following sections will give you insight into various flavors and tools of .NET and what kind of applications you can develop. • What type of applications can I develop? When you hear the name .NET, it gives a feeling that it is something to do only with internet or networked applications. Even though it is true that .NET provides solid foundation for developing such applications it is possible to create many other types of applications. Following list will give you an idea about various types of application that we can develop on .NET. 1. ASP.NET Web applications: These include dynamic and data driven browser based applications. 2. Windows Form based applications: These refer to traditional rich client applications. 3. Console applications: These refer to traditional DOS kind of applications like batch scripts. 4. Component Libraries: This refers to components that typically encapsulate some business logic. 5. Windows Custom Controls: As with traditional ActiveX controls, you can develop your own windows controls. 6. Web Custom Controls: The concept of custom controls can be extended to web applications allowing code reuse and modularization. 7. Web services: They are “web callable” functionality available via industry standards like HTTP, XML and SOAP. 8. Windows Services: They refer to applications that run as services in the background. They can be configured to start automatically when the system boots up. As you can clearly see, .NET is not just for creating web application but for almost all kinds of applications that you find under Windows.

Evaluation of .NET:

Around 1995, Java was gaining popularity because of its platform-independent approach and Sun Microsyatem's open source policy. Later in 2002, Sun Microsystems released the enterprise edition of Java. ie., Java 2 Enterprise edition(J2EE), which is a Java Platform to develop and execute distributed Java Applications based on the N-tier architecture. The advent of J2EE eventually led to the decline of, Microsoft's Market share. Consequently, Microsoft started a project called NEXT GENERATION WINDOWS SERVICE(NGWS) to regain the market share . It tooks more than three years to develop the product, Which is Known as .NET. Microsoft released the first version of .NET with the name .NET Framework 1.0 on february 13,2002, along with the Visual studio .NET 2002 integrated development environment(IDE). .NET's Second revised version took nearly a year to release; and it was known as .NET framework 1.1 Microsoft Visual studio .NET, bettre known as Visual studio .NET2003, was also a part of the second release. The next version of .NET framework, .NET Framework 2.0, was released with Visual studio .NET 2005 on november 07,2005. .NET framework 3.0 formerly called WinFX, was released on novenber 06,2006. Finally the latest version of .NET framework, known as .NET framework 3.5, was released with Visual studio .NET2008 on november 19,2007.

Feature of .NET

Features of .NET Now that we know some basics of .NET, let us see what makes .NET a wonderful platform for developing modern applications. • Rich Functionality out of the box .NET framework provides a rich set of functionality out of the box. It contains hundreds of classes that provide variety of functionality ready to use in your applications. This means that as a developer you need not go into low level details of many operations such as file IO, network communication and so on. • Easy development of web applications ASP.NET is a technology available on .NET platform for developing dynamic and data driven web applications. ASP.NET provides an event driven programming model (similar to Visual Basic 6 that simplify development of web pages (now called as web forms) with complex user interface. ASP.NET server controls provide advanced user interface elements (like calendar and grids) that save lot of coding from programmer’s side. • OOPs Support The advantages of Object Oriented programming are well known. .NET provides a fully object oriented environment. The philosophy of .NET is – “Object is mother of all.” Languages like Visual Basic.NET now support many of the OO features that were lacking traditionally. Even primitive types like integer and characters can be treated as objects – something not available even in OO languages like C++. • Multi-Language Support Generally enterprises have varying skill sets. For example, a company might have people with skills in Visual Basic, C++, and Java etc. It is an experience that whenever a new language or environment is invented existing skills are outdated. This naturally increases cost of training and learning curve. .NET provides something attractive in this area. It supports multiple languages. This means that if you have skills in C++, you need not throw them but just mould them to suit .NET environment. Currently four languages are available right out of the box namely – Visual Basic.NET, C# (pronounced as C-sharp), Jscript.NET and Managed C++ (a dialect of Visual C++). There are many vendors that are working on developing language compilers for other languages (20+ language compilers are already available). The beauty of multi language support lies in the fact that even though the syntax of each language is different, the basic capabilities of each language remain at par with one another. • Multi-Device Support Modern lift style is increasingly embracing mobile and wireless devices such as PDAs, mobiles and handheld PCs. . . .NET provides promising platform for programming such devices. .NET Compact Framework and Mobile Internet Toolkit are step ahead in this direction. • Automatic memory management While developing applications developers had to develop an eye on system resources like memory. Memory leaks were major reason in failure of applications. .NET takes this worry away from developer by handling memory on its own. The garbage collector takes care of freeing unused objects at appropriate intervals. • Compatibility with COM and COM+ Before the introduction of .NET, COM was the de-facto standard for componentized software development. Companies have invested lot of money and efforts in developing COM components and controls. The good news is – you can still use COM components and ActiveX controls under .NET. This allows you to use your existing investment in .NET applications. .NET still relies on COM+ for features like transaction management and object pooling. In fact it provides enhanced declarative support for configuring COM+ application right from your source code. Your COM+ knowledge still remains as a valuable asset. • No more DLL Hell If you have worked with COM components, you probably are aware of “DLL hell”. DLL conflicts are a common fact in COM world. The main reason behind this was the philosophy of COM – “one version of component across machine”. Also, COM components require registration in the system registry. .NET ends this DLL hell by allowing applications to use their own copy of dependent DLLs. Also, .NET components do not require any kind of registration in system registry. • Strong XML support Now days it is hard to find a programmer who is unaware of XML. XML has gained such a strong industry support that almost all the vendors have released some kind of upgrades or patches to their existing software to make it “XML compatible”. Currently, .NET is the only platform that has built with XML right into the core framework. .NET tries to harness power of XML in every possible way. In addition to providing support for manipulating and transforming XML documents, .NET provides XML web services that are based on standards like HTTP, XML and SOAP. • Ease of deployment and configuration Deploying windows applications especially that used COM components were always been a tedious task. Since .NET does not require any registration as such, much of the deployment is simplified. This makes XCOPY deployment viable. Configuration is another area where .NET – especially ASP.NET – shines over traditional languages. The configuration is done via special files having special XML vocabulary. Since, most of the configuration is done via configuration files, there is no need to sit in front of actual machine and configure the application manually. This is more important for web applications; simply FTPing new configuration file makes necessary changes. • Security Windows platform was always criticized for poor security mechanisms. Microsoft has taken great efforts to make .NET platform safe and secure for enterprise applications. Features such as type safety, code access security and role based authentication make overall application more robust and secure.

Don't Be A Computer Virus Victim
How To Avoid Computer Virus?
I think it's great that Macs enjoy "virus protections" that the PC doesn't. But if you think you're 'safe' because you're trusting the computer, consider the fact that the vast majority of PC users aren't on Macs, so hackers don't bother to write viruses for them. Knowing that, you still must understand that viruses get triggered not because the computer is a PC but because the user isn't paying attention.
Don't blame PCs, blame users. As long as users continue to allow their email programs to automatically launch files, idiocy like the Sobig virus will continue. This was the fifth version of this virus and they keep getting nastier than their predecessors.
It takes simple common sense and a lot of meticulousness to keep from launching viruses but it's not hard. Here's a list of the precautions I take to avoid computer viruses.
Don't download anything from anyone you don't know or aren't expecting... EVER. For all you VAs, and publishers and whoever else out there is trading files back and forth with your clients... Stop and make sure that your client has a safe system before you start trading files with them. It's worth the time.
2. Turn off the autolaunch in your email client. I don't even auto-launch graphics. Furthermore, READ YOUR EMAIL ONLINE! Don't download the email until you're 100% sure it is safe. Use Netscape, use Yahoo, use Eudora, use Simplecheck; I'm sure there are others.
3. If your email has an attachment, go into your headers and look at it. If it's got a pif or scr extension, chances are it's a virus. If it's any Microsoft program file, and you aren't expecting it, it in itself probably isn't a virus, but it could very easily have a virus embedded in it. The only things that hacker's haven't been able to embed viruses into, to my knowledge, are pictures. But just because it says it's a picture doesn't mean it is. Look at the attachment name. File names don't lie. If it's a .jpg.scr extension, it's a virus.
4. Antivirus protection programs are only ever as up to date as known viruses. They are also the first target of a virus, so don't trust the antivirus protection program alone. If you've used your eyes and don't believe it's a virus, scan it anyway. I use Yahoo, because they keep Norton up to date and I don't have to run it on my system. Norton in and of itself is a great antivirus protection program, but it's not infallible.
5. Set your computer so it doesn't autolaunch files, updates, security checks, html pages, cookies, etc. without your permission!
6. Get a quality anti-spyware program - They're designed to get rid of programs on your system that send your data to the web and as such could be opening holes that you don't know about.
7. Set up a software firewall. If you don't have a software firewall built in, upgrade your OS. And make sure everyone on your LAN is set up with the same firewall.
8. Don't rely only on the software; set up a hardware firewall. It's called a router and it's easy to set up and maintain.
9. Take the time and make the effort to understand how viruses and worms get onto your computer and you can virtually stop them all in their tracks.
10. Once you've got all your holes closed, get someone who knows what they're doing to test it from the Internet side. If you don't have someone, I can refer someone.
11. Don't let kids on the 'Net on your system! I find it funny that businesses will spend billions of dollars on marketing and advertising, but they leave their computer systems open to hackers whose sole purpose in life is to take advantage of KNOWN cracks in the system. In my opinion, the only real hole is the User. If you don't protect your system, nobody else will.
I probably sound a little cocky telling everyone my anti-virus procedures like this, but I'm not really. I have very sensitive data on my system I cannot afford to lose or to have sent out willy nilly to the Internet. So I'm cautious. I'm also smart enough to know that the second I let my guard down, something is going to find its way in and I won't be able to say "never" again. But I don't intend to let my guard down.
And if anyone out there is serious about doing everything you can to stop from getting a virus, but don't have the computer literacy to feel you can do it, email me and I'll find the time to help you put it all together.

Practical Demo

Practical Demonstration For Dotnet and WP7