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Posts Tagged ‘xaml’

Popularity of C# vs. JS vs. C++ for Windows 8 apps

Posted in Win8 Metro, tagged , , , , , , on August 27, 2012| 11 Comments »

A few months ago I was speaking with a reporter and was asked which development model the industry was gravitating toward for Windows 8 apps. My impression was that Xaml + C# appeared to be strongest out of the gate but only time would tell if JavaScript+HTML would slowly close the gap.

So far, this hasn’t happened. C# (and VB) + Xaml development has held its ground as by far the most popular development model for Windows 8 Metro Store apps. In fact, preference is now over 3 to 1 over JavaScript + HTML.

Since early April, I’ve been taking random snapshots of the number of posts on the MSDN Windows 8 development forums and here are the results…

UPDATE for Oct 28: C#/VB gains even more ground…

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Raw data:

Model 9-Apr 14-Jun 31-Jul 22-Aug 28-Oct
JavaScript 3645 5926 7831 8573
10631
C++ 2779 4494 5647 6263
7914
C#/VB 10030 16337 21921 24798
34562

What is the trend? If anything C# is gaining share…

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I have numerous opinions about why this is the way it is, but I’ll leave this speculation for another day. Why do you think C# and Xaml are more popular for Windows 8 development? Or is counting forum post a poor way to measure?

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Microsoft Media Platform: Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro style apps

Posted in Media, Win8 Metro, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2012| 9 Comments »

Need to build an app that plays video? This week we released a new version of the MMP: Player Framework (formerly the Silverlight Media Framework) made for Windows 8 Metro style applications.

With guidance the Windows 8 and IIS teams, we (Microsoft Media Platform team & Vertigo Software) created an open source media player framework that you can use for both HTML-based and XAML-based Metro style applications.

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Support for HTML and XAML

The player framework supports both HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C#/VB based Metro style applications. Technically, there are two different components (one for HTML and one for XAML based apps), but they share very similar APIs, feature sets, and in some cases even share the same source code. Under the hood, the XAML version is built on top of the MediaElement that ships with .NET and similarly, the HTML version is built on top of the HTML5 <video> tag.

Our primary goal was to ensure both flavors felt natural and familiar to both HTML and XAML developers. If you are an HTML/JavaScript developer, using the JavaScript version will be very similar to using the other JavaScript controls that ship with Windows 8 as well as those already familiar with the HTML5 <video> tag. If you are a XAML/managed code developer, you can expect the XAML version to adhere to the practices and patterns of .NET & Silverlight controls.

Extensibility

The framework: We refer to the player framework as a framework as opposed to a control or component because it is intended to be a mini-platform in it’s own right. While these details will be hidden to the majority of developers using it as is out of the box media player, the player framework is built on a plugin style architecture that enables the feature set to be expanded and evolve after the fact without touching the core code base. In fact, many of the features currently in the framework are implemented as plugins. For example: the main control bar that the user interacts with is technically a plugin that could be swapped in our out for a radically different implementation.

Styling: One of the most common requirements in building a media player is to be able to skin the UI to match your brand. By default, the player framework ships with a Metro style skin, but you can easily modify the look and feel of the player from CSS or XAML without having to build a custom player.

Open source: the player frameworks ships with full source code under the liberal Ms-Pl license. Crack it open and see how it ticks or make changes to suite your needs.

How similar is it to the existing HTML5 or Silverlight versions of the player framework?

You may already be familiar with the existing HTML5 for the web or Silverlight for the web/desktop and phone versions of the player framework. The Windows 8 version of the framework should feel familiar and is in fact based on much of the same code. However, you should not expect full compatibility. We wanted to make sure the player framework felt like it was made for Windows 8 Metro style apps and it’s respective development model (HTML vs. XAML). We also wanted to meld the two versions and their APIs when it made sense. Lastly, we used this opportunities to make architectural improvements that would better position the framework for a long and bright future.

Features

You’ll find that the player framework has an extensive API chocked full of many useful hooks and features. From 30,000 feet, here is a sampling of features you will find in v1 of the player framework.

  • VOD
  • Progressive video
  • Smooth streaming
  • Rich DVR (Play, pause, stop, fast forward, rewind, skip next & back, seek-able timeline, volume, slow motion, instant replay)
  • Full screen
  • Closed captions (plain text for Xaml and WebVTT for js)
  • Styling support
  • Buffering and error/retry visual states.
  • Poster image
  • Click-to-play UI to let the user choose to start watching.
  • All features already included with the MediaElement and <Video/>
  • Playlist
  • Chapters
  • Timeline markers
  • Support for localization
  • Compact UI for snapped view
  • Support for DRM (e.g. PlayReady)

What’s next?

The fun doesn’t stop here. We’re already hard at work on more features. Here are some prominent ones in the cards.

  • Adaptive streaming APIs
  • Advertising
  • Audio player
  • TTML closed captions
  • Audio track selection (multi-language audio)
  • Live video

Got feedback?

We’d love to hear your feedback and make sure the player framework offers the features and functionality you need in your apps. We encourage developers to check out the player framework on CodePlex and post feedback on the CodePlex forum.

Hope you enjoy!

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SuperStackPanel = Grid + StackPanel

Posted in Programming Tools, Silverlight tips and tricks, tagged , , , , , on February 25, 2010| 10 Comments »

Here’s a new panel to add to your tool chest. It’s one I expect to use almost daily and save approximately 3.1 hours of typing over the next year. Hopefully you’ll find it useful as useful as I think it is.

What’s wrong with the built-in StackPanel:

You can’t get children to conform to the size of the panel. Imagine you want the following label and list but want the height of the Listbox to stretch or shrink according to the room available:

At first glance, a StackPanel would seem to be the natural choice for which panel to accomplish this. Afterall, you just want a linear list of two objects: a TextBlock and ListBox. However, unless you are willing to hardcode the size of the ListBox or resize it with code, with a StackPanel you’ll end up with:

Yuck! Clipping instead of a scrollbar. So how do you get the desired behavior?

Answer: Grid.

So what’s wrong with a Grid?

  1. Grids take more lines xaml to create. Compare the StackPanel Xaml to the Grid’s above and notice the 4 extra lines of Xaml. Ok, not a huge deal but if you’re doing this every day like me, you start to get sick of creating RowDefinition and ColumnDefinition objects.
  2. With a grid you have to explicitly define the order of the children. Adding the attached property Grid.Row is easy on your first pass but what happens if you want to insert a new row somewhere in the middle. You not only have to add a new RowDefinition, but you also have to remember to go increment the row number on all subsequent siblings. This is a pain and error prone because a sibling would potentially be defined in any order in the grid.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get the best of both worlds?

What we really want here is a StackPanel that allows you to define the size of the children.

Welcome SuperStackPanel:

Just set the attached property StackPanel.Length to “*” to get a child to stretch.

In fact, SuperStackPanel lets you use all the same GridLength values you can use in a Grid (Auto, *, n*, and x):

Have I sold you yet? The nice part is that SuperStackPanel is completely compatible with a normal StackPanel. Just swap out your StackPanel for SuperStackPanel and everything will look the same because the default value of Length is “Auto”. Frankly, I’d love to see Microsoft expand the role of StackPanel to support this natively. Of course, until then, there’s SuperStackPanel.

SuperStackPanel is lightweight and simple to add to your project, just download the C# source code, add to your project, add the namespace to your xaml and away you’ll go. Enjoy!

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