Multiple desktops for a Windows world

Posted by: on | Tuesday, May 14, 2013     Comments

You will probably agree that having 2+ monitors is one of the most productive enhancements you can do to your PC setup. It is not so easy when traveling or if you are embracing the post-PC era. This is why it is vital to have "multiple desktops" instead. This is not a new concept if you are coming from the Mac or Linux world. Why Windows still has not jumped on this is beyond me. Until this light hits them, let me introduce you to Dexpot.

First thing you will notice is a quick view in the taskbar. This ...

Fixing Windows 8 Deployment Error: "Error : DEP0700 : Registration of the app failed"

Posted by: on | Thursday, April 04, 2013     Comments

I ran into an error when I was setting up a project in Visual Studio for an existing Windows 8 app I already had installed from the Windows 8 Store. When I tried to run the project in the debugger for the first time, I got the following error message:

Error : DEP0700 : Registration of the app failed. Another user has already installed a packaged version of this app. An unpackaged version cannot replace this. The conflicting package is [MyProjectName] and it was published by [MyCertificate]. (0x80073cf9)


This seemed odd to me since I had already uninstalled the app ...

Telerik Tools Helped Deliver EventBoard on Time

Posted by: on | Wednesday, February 27, 2013     Comments

Building our EventBoard mobile solution for conferences was no easy task. The solution includes native applications for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8, Windows Azure cloud services, a web based administration portal, and a separate product website.

Thankfully, we were able to use the tools from Telerik in nearly every facet of development. The tools saved us time and money, and now Telerik has featured our development story in a detailed case study. You can read all about what it took to build EventBoard here.

EventBoard Official App of Microsoft MVP Summit

Posted by: on | Tuesday, February 12, 2013     Comments

Falafel Software’s mobile conference solution EventBoard, has been chosen as the official application of the Microsoft MVP Summit.

The Microsoft MVP Award is given to technical experts who actively participate in the community, sharing both their knowledge and enthusiasm for Microsoft products. For 20 years, it has remained one of the most difficult awards to earn and wearing the badge of an MVP has signified supreme technical excellence with Microsoft technologies.

Each year, every MVP from around the world is invited to Microsoft headquarters for the MVP Summit. This private event gives MVPs early and direct access to ...

Surface Pro for Developers

Posted by: on | Monday, February 11, 2013     Comments

For years I've always liked the idea of having the ability to develop on the road. Few who know me would ever deny that I'm a true road warrior, although I'm beginning to slow down. Whether it was taking my kids all over the world to fence, chasing storms, hiking off the trail, or even jet skiing at the lake, I often had my laptop with me. I've come up with some of my best ideas while on the road. However, the size and bulk of my various laptops always had me wishing for something else.

 

The Surface RT ...

Handling the AdControl with Flyout Settings Pages

Posted by: on | Wednesday, January 30, 2013     Comments

In my last blog post, Using Generic Attached Properties to Simplify Windows 8 Settings Charm Pages , I talked about how to easily add Settings Charm pages to any Windows 8 app. If your app happens to have an AdControl, you might have an issue that you need to handle. The issue is that AdControl is hosted in a WebView Control, which causes the control to always be on top. When flyout Settings Charm pages overlap AdControl elements you get unexpected behaviors. It's a known issue but is easy to handle. I've updated the GitHub example to include a couple of ...

Falafel Software Announces FalafelCon

Posted by: on | Tuesday, January 29, 2013     Comments

Falafel Software is pleased to announce FalafelCon 2013, the new annual training conference for software developers.

Capitola CA - 29th January, 2013 - Falafel Software’s new annual training conference, FalafelCon, will take place at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus on June 10 and 11th, offering software developers four co-located events and 40 technical sessions to choose from.

FalafelCon’s four co-located events include Web and Mobile specific events that explore cutting edge software development techniques with Microsoft development tools. Advanced development topics include Azure tips and tricks, cross platform mobile development, NFC with Windows Phone, Windows 8 sensor integration and ...

Falafel Bugs for Windows 8 Released

Posted by: on | Thursday, January 17, 2013     Comments

We take quality seriously. Up until now, if you said the word “bug” in the halls of Falafel Software, you had better be whispering.

So just imagine how much fun it was to build an app that was full of bugs. Of course, we’re not talking about programming bugs, but the kind of bugs that can scurry all over your screen and give anyone looking over your shoulder the creeps.

This new Windows 8 app wasn’t just for fun either, this bug invasion is smart. You can set the size of the swarm and these intelligent little creatures can tell ...

Using Generic Attached Properties to Simplify Windows 8 Settings Charm Pages

Posted by: on | Wednesday, January 16, 2013     Comments

I’ve always liked attached properties… so much so that a couple of years ago I created a series of generic classes to simplify the process of creating custom attached properties.

Attached Properties – a review:

  • External control interactions — like the Grid.Row attached property.
  • Basic info storage — just like the Tag property.
  • Behaviors — changing properties and behaviors of the parent control.
  • Bindings — to achieve custom bindings between UI controls.
  • If you use XAML, you use attached properties whether you realize it or not.

Creating a custom attached property only takes a few lines of code. Many declarative ...

Falafel Launches New Sitefinity 5.3 Website

Posted by: on | Wednesday, January 02, 2013     Comments

Its 2013, so out with the old and in with the new! Over the holidays, the Falafel team was hard at work preparing our new Sitefinity 5.3 website for launch. The new site is a complete redesign inspired by Windows 8 that features a tile-based, color-coded theme to make navigating the site and finding the exact Falafel Software content you were looking for easier than ever before.

Under the hood, the Sitefinity 5.3 engine and MVC based widgets have given the site a huge performance boost over past incarnations. Fans of Sitefinity will also recognize and appreciate that the Falafel ...

Learn from Falafel at the Worlds Largest Hackathon

Posted by: on | Thursday, November 08, 2012     Comments

Make that an “Appathon”. Microsoft’s “Gen Appathon”. On Friday Nov 9th, Microsoft is hosting the world’s largest code fest at cities all over the country. This free event is your chance to build Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 applications with education and oversight from experts. The experts at the Sunnyvale, CA event and Irving, TX  event includes three familiar faces who we can vouch for. In Irving, get help from Bary Nusz, the author of the Magnetometer app for Windows Phone and a long series of in-depth Windows Phone and Windows 8 related blogs. At the ...

Declarative ComboBoxes in XAML

Posted by: on | Tuesday, October 30, 2012     Comments

Developing in XAML (Windows 8, Silverlight, Windows Phone, or WPF) gives you a powerful combination of declarative markup with databinding, but one shortcoming I often come up against is the ability to build simple ComboBox elements declaratively with both Content and Values.
If you are familiar with HTML, you know that you can use a select tag to pair the display name with a key value, such as:

<select>
  <option value="volvo">Volvo</option>
  <option value="saab">Saab</option>
  <option value="mercedes">Mercedes</option>
  <option value...

A Big Dose of Sitefinity from Falafel

Posted by: on | Thursday, October 18, 2012     Comments

**Update - To get Lino's slides from the Sitefinity and Beyond performance session go here.

Today, Falafel Software CEO Lino Tadros is speaking at the Sitefinity and Beyond Conference in Boston, but that is only a part of our big Sitefinity news.

Customers tend to approach Falafel for the hard stuff. Performance problems, integrations, custom modules, often much more than just a pretty user interface. Having consulted on over 100 of these complex Sitefinity solutions, Lino is well suited to deliver the talk on “Deploying High Performing and Scalable Web Solutions”, but it’s his energy and comedic style that ...

Doing an asynchronous search in Windows 8

Posted by: on | Wednesday, October 10, 2012     Comments

I was teaching a class today at HP, and demonstrating how to implement Search suggestions for in app search. The pattern is easy: you hook an event, and in the event, return any matches. Here is an example:

  var sp = SearchPane.GetForCurrentView();
  sp.SuggestionsRequested += OnSearchPaneSuggestionsRequested;

// ...  



void OnSearchPaneSuggestionsRequested(object sender, SearchPaneSuggestionsRequestedEventArgs args)
   {
     args.Request.SearchSuggestionCollection.AppendQuerySuggestions(
       (from t  in App.ViewModel.ConferenceInfos
         where t.Name.StartsWith(args.QueryText, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)
        select t.Name).Take(5));  
   }

A Salute to the Falafel Rock Stars

Posted by: on | Friday, October 05, 2012     Comments

Every year, October kicks off a very busy season at Falafel : “Conference Season”. Multiple members of the team travel across the country and around world to share their expertise on a number of technologies. All Falafel Software team members spend their days, and often their nights, helping design and build cutting edge solutions for our customers. Their technical presentations draw from these real world experiences and are assembled, practiced, and presented in what little spare time they have. That’s why we call them “Rock Stars”.

This weekend at Silicon Valley Code Camp, Falafel’s entire team from around the ...

Windows 8 Unleashed - Mountain View

Posted by: on | Thursday, September 27, 2012     Comments

John Waters is at it again. The Falafel Software President and CTO has been spreading the Windows 8 love all over the country. This Saturday you can catch him teaching the Windows 8 Unleashed event at the Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, California.

Windows 8 Unleashed is a free event and a great opportunity for experienced .NET developers and novices alike. You'll listen. You'll learn. You'll build....and you might even win some money in the hack-a-thon.

To learn more and register, visit : http://win8unleasheddojo.eventbrite.com/

Behind the curtain with Windows 8 Style project templates

Posted by: on | Monday, August 27, 2012     Comments

When you create a new project using the Windows 8 Style application templates Visual Studio does a number of things behind the scenes on your behalf.  Understanding these is handy should you knowingly or unintentionally develop an application that depends on any of these settings.  Creating your own Windows 8 style applications in Visual Studio 2012 is very straightforward, it is upon leaving the safe cocoon of Visual Studio that things get interesting. 

 

Visual Studio acquires a Windows 8 developer license on your behalf in order to permit testing Windows 8 style applications before approval from the Store and ...

Lino Tadros on the Tablet Show

Posted by: on | Monday, August 27, 2012     Comments

Listen to this week's installment of "The Tablet Show" featuring Falafel CEO Lino Tadros.
 
The Tablet Show (Show 47, Released Aug. 27th, 2012 )

You'll enjoy this 10-time Microsoft MVP's take on Windows 8 development, HTML 5, JavaScript, iPad and more as Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell ask about his real world experiences developing in the mobile space. 



FREE Windows 8 Unleashed Event - Sunnyvale

Posted by: on | Tuesday, August 21, 2012     Comments

For our friends in Silicon Valley, don't miss Falafel President and CTO John Waters explaining how to build new style Windows 8 apps this Saturday in Sunnyvale. This is your chance to learn from the architect of EventBoard, the first event app available in the Windows 8 store.

What: Windows 8 Unleashed - Sunnyvale
When: Saturday, Aug 25th, 2012  8:00am to 8:00pm
Where:
Nokia
200 S Mathilda Ave, Sunnyvale, CA 94086
Cost to attend: FREE!
Register : http://unleashednsunnyvale.eventbrite.com

First you will learn, then you will build! Spend the morning in lecture and hands on labs and the afternoon competing ...

EventBoard in the Windows 8 Store

Posted by: on | Thursday, August 16, 2012     Comments

Microsoft officially released Windows 8 to the public yesterday and one of the first applications you can download from the Windows 8 store comes from Falafel Software. It is with great pleasure and excitement that we announce the availability of EventBoard for Windows 8! Early adopters of Windows tablets will love the new Modern UI style interface, complete with all the Windows 8 bells and whistles. Semantic zoom, share charm integration, snapping, notifications and more will make navigating any conference a breeze. We encourage you to download it and try it out for yourself.

EventBoard for Windows 8 is ...