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where I share my journey with you

Old blog

 

Most of the posts here were written originally many years ago but they were transferred to this new home in 2024. The dates are transfer dates.

Hong

Avoid Windows 11 SDK (10.0.26100)

Microsoft released this Windows 11 SDK (10.0.26100) with many bugs and backward compatibility issues. Most importantly, it lack the support for ARM devices, which are growing. If you install Windows 11 SDK (10.0.26100) and target your UWP app to Windows 11 24H2. everything will be…

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Hong

Chinese stock market trap

The Shanghai index first broke above 2,000 in July 2000 and almost tripled to 6,092.06 on Oct. 16, 2007. Now it is back to about 2,000. China has certainly made history by 600% GDP increase and zero stock market gain in 12 years. Even in…

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Hong

Multi-page Windows Phone Application

Unlike a desktop application, a smartphone app with its limited real estate does not have the luxury of menus, ribbons, tabs to choose different switch to different windows or pages. One may think switching to a new page is as simple as opening a new…

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Hong

Mobile device not shown on Windows 10

Mobile devices should be shown under This PC of Windows 10 when connected. If the beep can be heard, but the device is not shown under This PC, one can see a problem in Device Manager. There is a solution to this problem. 

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Hong

Mobile Workforce is the reality and future

IDC Forecasts U.S. Mobile Worker Population to grow from 96.2 million (61%) in 2015 to 105.4 million (72.3%) by 2020! hubEngage is primarily for internal use by relatively large organizations. Breather primarily the need for office on deman in metropolises where rent is high. It…

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Hong

Cost of mobile app development

This is the type of question that is bound to have no meaningful simple answer. It is like the question "What is the cost of building a home?". One can build a habitable shelter home for less than $1000, and can spend over $100 million…

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Hong

Consume SOAP Web Services in Mobile Apps

Mobile applications were probably not considered most when SOAP was originated in 90s by Microsoft staff. It is usually impractical, or at least, not optimal for mobile applications to host SOAP services, but it is perfectly practical for mobile applications to consume SOAP web services…

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Hong

Use SkiaSharp to encode images in Uno proejcts

SkiaSharp is a versatile package that can be used on all mobile platforms. The following code encodes a pixel array to an JPEG image and displays it. SKImageInfo sii = new SKImageInfo(iWidth, 1, SKColorType.Rgba8888); SKData sd = SKData.Create(new MemoryStream(abPixels)); SKImage sKImage = SKImage.FromPixelData(sii, sd, iWidth…

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Hong

Migration from Uno to Uno WinUI

The bottom line: WinUI is not ready for prime time as of December 2023. At its current progress pace, it needs at least 1 or 2 more years to grow to be sufficiently reliable and clean. Though Uno is a much more mature and stabler…

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Hong

Create C# SOAP Proxy classes with Microsoft wsdl tool

For developing apps that support service reference (e.g. UWP apps), one can consume web services defined by WSDL files by adding a service reference in VS and using the generated proxy classes. The approach requires the platform supports namespace System.ServiceModel which inner working is quite convoluted,…

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Hong

Uno Platform

Uno Platform is likely the best platform for developing apps targeting multiple platforms - Windows, web, Android and iOS. One should have realistic perspective of Uno before getting into it: To start enjoying Uno Platform: For each new app tarting multiple platforms: UWP Head: Android…

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Hong

Screen capture to video with UWP app

The Microsoft Windows.GraphicsCapture API's performance is so poor that it is largely unusable. It may work with very powerful video cards, but many other screen capture apps such as SnagIt work fine with regular PCs.

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