UniversalApps – IT Bytes

How to display icons in Appbar’s secondary menu

December 5, 2015December 5, 2015pauliom2 Comments

By default the secondary menu from an AppBar does not display a icon. However, it’s pretty trivial to change.

<Page.BottomAppBar>
   <CommandBar>
      <AppBarButton Label="A" Icon="Accept" >
         <CommandBar.SecondaryCommands>
           <AppBarButton Label="B" Icon="Accept" Style="{StaticResource AppBarButtonStyle1}" />
         </CommandBar.SecondaryCommands>
   </CommandBar>
</Page.BottomAppBar>

Then in the AppBarButtonStyle1 change the overflow, here is very quick hack to prove the point;

 <VisualState x:Name="Overflow"
  <Storyboard>
     <ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="Visibility" Storyboard.TargetName="ContentRoot">
        <DiscreteObjectKeyFrame KeyTime="0" Value="Visible"/>
     </ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames>
     <ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="Visibility" Storyboard.TargetName="OverflowTextLabel">
        <DiscreteObjectKeyFrame KeyTime="0" Value="Collapsed"/>
     </ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames>
  </Storyboard>
 </VisualState>

and that gives you

Obviously that is ugly but it is the base of how to provide the icons

1080p 6 inch Silverlight vs. Jupiter

May 20, 2014May 20, 2014pauliom1 Comment

Anyone know how to resolve this? Given the simple XAML;

<Grid>
        <Grid.RowDefinitions>
            <RowDefinition Height="1*"/>
            <RowDefinition Height="2*"/>
            <RowDefinition Height="3*"/>
        </Grid.RowDefinitions>

        <Border Background="Red"  Grid.Row="0" >
            <TextBlock Text="Silverlight"  />
        </Border>

        <Rectangle Fill="Blue" Grid.Row="1" />
        <Rectangle Fill="Green" Grid.Row="2" />

    </Grid>

This results in some very different results;

Silverlight	Jupiter

The Silverlight version scales nicely with the phone, whereas the Jupiter version renders the text without scaling it. How do you resolve this?

Controlling the StatusBar (SystemTray) in a Universal App

April 15, 2014April 15, 2014pauliom4 Comments

One of the problems of using Universal Apps is that some components only exist in one platform and not in another. One such example is the StatusBar (formally known as SystemTray) for Windows Phone 8.1. For example, to change the colour of the StatusBar you have to use code rather than xaml. This makes life a bit awkward when you want to use a shared page. So to avoid this issue I’ve created a User Control (ChromeController.xaml) that exists in both platforms;

The ChromeController is just dropped into the shared page like any other control, except this one doesn’t have any visuals (I could have used a real control, but I’m being lazy).

User Control

<UserControl
    x:Class="UniApp.ChromeController"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    />

Snippet from shared page;

<Grid>
            <local:ChromeController Background="Pink" Opacity="0.6" />

For the Windows 8.1 variant the code does absolutely nothing, although in the long term it could easily control win81 only assets. However, for the Windows Phone 8.1 it reuses the elements Background and Opacity settings and sets the StatusBar to the same values.

    public sealed partial class ChromeController : UserControl
    {
        public ChromeController()
        {
            this.InitializeComponent();

            this.Loaded += ChromeController_Loaded;
     
        }

        void ChromeController_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {            
            var solidColorBrush = this.Background as SolidColorBrush;
            if (solidColorBrush != null)
            {
                var color = solidColorBrush.Color;
                var statusBar = StatusBar.GetForCurrentView();
                statusBar.BackgroundOpacity = this.Opacity;
                statusBar.BackgroundColor = color;
            }
        }
    }

Here’s the result.

Using Visual State Manager to share a Universal App page

April 14, 2014April 14, 2014pauliom1 Comment

I was having a chat about how Universal Apps work and how you might use the Visual State Manager to support both Win8 and Phone layouts in a single page. Here goes;

Create a new Universal App
Cut MainPage.xaml from Windows 8.1 and paste it into Shared
Delete MainPage.xaml from Phone

Add a few simple Visual States to represent the screen sizes/orientations you want. In this case I have; MinimalOrPhonePortrailLayout, PortraitLayout, DefaultLayout

    <Grid>
        <VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups>
            <VisualStateGroup>
                <VisualState x:Name="DefaultLayout">
                </VisualState>
                <VisualState x:Name="MinimalOrPhonePortrailLayout">
                    <Storyboard>
                        <ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames Duration="0" Storyboard.TargetProperty="Text" Storyboard.TargetName="SimpleMessage">
                            <DiscreteObjectKeyFrame KeyTime="0:0:0" Value="Phone Layout" />
                        </ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames>
                    </Storyboard>
                </VisualState>
                <VisualState x:Name="PortraitLayout">
                    <Storyboard>
                        <ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames Duration="0" Storyboard.TargetProperty="Text" Storyboard.TargetName="SimpleMessage">
                            <DiscreteObjectKeyFrame KeyTime="0:0:0" Value="Big Device Portrait" />
                        </ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames>
                    </Storyboard>
                </VisualState>
            </VisualStateGroup>
        </VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups>
        <Grid>
            <TextBlock Name="SimpleMessage" Text="Hello Default World" TextTrimming="WordEllipsis" Foreground="Blue" FontSize="60"/>
        </Grid>
    </Grid>

Add a SizeChanged event to the page, this will be used to select the state

        public MainPage()
        {
            this.InitializeComponent();

            this.NavigationCacheMode = NavigationCacheMode.Required;
            this.SizeChanged += Page_SizeChanged;
        }

        void Page_SizeChanged(object sender, SizeChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            if (e.NewSize.Width < 520)
            {
                VisualStateManager.GoToState(this, "MinimalOrPhonePortrailLayout", true);
            }
            else if (e.NewSize.Width < e.NewSize.Height)
            {
                VisualStateManager.GoToState(this, "PortraitLayout", true);
            }
            else
            {
                VisualStateManager.GoToState(this, "DefaultLayout", true);
            }
        }