Device Family Views: Some Continuum Advice

There are a number of blog posts, that show off a new feature in Windows 10 development call xaml views, that allow you to have a different xaml file for the same page depending on the device family (a great one here by Morten). There may be genuine reasons where going for an adaptive approach might not be right for your app depending on the design constraints of your app, in which case it makes perfect sense that you’d want device specific views.

Coming soon with the new Lumia devices is a nice feature called Continuum, which allows you to effectively use your phone as a PC, where you can connect it to a monitor, and use a mouse and keyboard with it, and really shows to highlight the universal aspect of Universal Apps as you effectively then have a desktop UI that you can use. So using a desktop on a mobile, what could go wrong?

Dealing with Right-to-Left Languages, Things to Consider

Localising your apps can be hard, whether it’s finding the funds to get all your resources localised, or finding community members who will help you do it, it’s never easy. Those levels of difficulty can also be increased when you start to consider right-to-left languages, such as Arabic, or Hebrew, because it’s not just a question of adding those languages and you’re done. Far from it, in fact. Not only do you have to write extra code just to enable right-to-left, there are other practical matters that you may need to consider for your app’s design. Why? Because with right-to-left languages, the whole UI gets mirrored. Let’s look at some of those things you may need to think about.