Matrakci Calculator – my new Windows Phone app


Find this application on Windows Phone Marketplace at this location: http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=59680235-b5e2-41a9-b2f5-49eebfc62301

If you want to play online this calculator right now, check this link. It is described all you want to know about Matrakci and Lattice multiplication as well.

about_matrakci

During holidays I was working on a small Windows Phone app. The application simulates how people performed multiplication more than 500 years ago. Before 500 years, people didn’t have devices we have today, so it was pretty complicated to calculate how much is e.g. 2345*6542. Those days, one of the discovered devices was Napier Bones, which could perform multiplication of pretty big numbers (with 2 or more digits). The device uses very clever method for multiplication, discovered 50 years before Napier constructed his Abacus. A recent study of  the book, “Support of arithmetic in propositions of all magnitudes” (org. “Umdet-ul Hisab”) revealed an unknown fact that Matrakci had invented this genuine multiplication method. Nasuh Maktrakci was 16th century Ottoman mathematician, teacher, historian, geographer, cartographer, swordmaster, and miniaturist of Bosniak origin.
Currently application is preparing for sumbiting to marketplace, but there is a web silvelright version of the application which you can taste now. Just go to http://datasoft.ba/demos/matrakci/Matrakci.aspx and taste this very clever method for multiplication.

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WPWidgetLibrary presentation at CodeCamp 11(MkNET User Group)


This year too, MkNET UG (Macedonian User group) is organizing CodeCamp 11. This is one of the most popular UG event on Blakan. Very huge number of attendees and speakers. The CodeCamp is organizing in to 5 tracks: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue and Student tracks.

This year I got the invitiation from the  INETA and MkNET to speak at CodeCamp 11.

WPWidgetLibrary – HTML5 Widgets for WP7 Mango will be presentation which I am goint to present at Yellow track. I can say I am very exciting about this event.

As I have written the WPWidgetLibrary is announced at MobilityDay, and published at codeplex month before. We got very positive feedback from the dev community and the Mk Code Camp will also be a chanse to present our open source solution to the Macedonian .NET community.

More information about Code Camp 11 can be found at http://www.codecamp.mkdot.net, and my speach will be at Yellow track from 11:00 to 12:00.

The more information about sessions and agenda can be found here.

Meet you there!

Customization of WPWidgetLibrary


In only 12 days WPWidgetLibrary reach more that 800 page views and over 50 downloads. This is good start of the library since building HTML5 apps in Windows Phone is coming. We have also got several feedbacks and questions about the library, and we can say the WPWidgetLibrary is indeed solution for developing hybrid mobile applications for Windows Phone 7.
One of the question about WPWIdgetLibrary is how to customise some features. For example default library no support avi file format. For that reason we have opened Discussion section of the library and put some answers. Here is one of them Damir has posted:
WpWidgetLibrary installs HTML app by calling:

InstalHTMLContent(string htmlFolder, string[] htmlDirs) ;

where htmlFolder is the folder in solution which contains all required web files. In other words this is the root of web-application which will be executed from isolated storage. Because you are free to use any kind of extension like “myfile.tiff” the framework can either copy any file in your project or specific files. We decided to copy specific files only.
Here is how we do it:

protected virtual bool IsWebExtension(string ext)       {
bool res = false;
switch (ext.ToLower())
{
 case "htm":
 case "html":
 case "js":
 case "jpg":
 case "jpeg":
 case "png":
 case "css":
 res = true;
 break;
 }
return res;
}

If your HTML mobile app requires other file formats eg. “abc.avi”, just derive the WPWIdgetLibrary class and override this method like the following sample.

public class MyWPWidgetLibrary: WPWidgetLibrary{
protected override bool IsWebExtension(string ext){
bool res = false;
 switch (ext.ToLower())
 {
 case "avi":
 return true;
 //break;
 }
 return base.IsWebExtension(ext);
 }
}

Now WPWidgetLibrary supports custom avi files.
On similar way you can implement support of any file format you want.

In only 12 days WPWidgetLibrary reach more that 800 page views and over 50 downloads. This is good start of the library since building HTML5 apps in Windows Phone is coming. We have also got several feedbacks and questions about the library, and we can say the WPWidgetLibrary is indeed solution for developing hybrid mobile applications for Windows Phone 7.

One of the question about WPWIdgetLibrary is how to customise some features. For example default library no support avi file format. For that reason we have opened  Discussion section of the library and put some answers. Here is one of them Damir has posted:

WpWidgetLibrary installs HTML app by calling:


 InstalHTMLContent(string htmlFolder, string[] htmlDirs) ;

where htmlFolder is the folder in solution which contains all required web files. In other words this is the root of web-application which will be executed from isolated storage. Because you are free to use any kind of extension like “myfile.tiff” the framework can either copy any file in your project or specific files. We decided to copy specific files only.

Here is how we do it:


protected virtual bool IsWebExtension(string ext)       {
bool res = false;
switch (ext.ToLower())
{
 case "htm":
 case "html":
 case "js":
 case "jpg":
 case "jpeg":
 case "png":
 case "css":
 res = true;
break;
}
return res;
}

If your HTML mobile app requires other file formats eg. “abc.avi”, just derive the WPWIdgetLibrary class and override this method like the following sample.

public class MyWPWidgetLibrary: WPWidgetLibrary{
protected override bool IsWebExtension(string ext){
bool res = false;
switch (ext.ToLower())
{
 case "avi":
 return true;
 //break;
}
return base.IsWebExtension(ext);
}
}

Now WPWidgetLibrary supports custom avi files.

On similar way you can implement support of any file format you want.

Announcing WpWidgetLibrary – HTML Widgets for Windows Phone


WpWidgetLibrary - HTML Widgets for Windows Phone

-Do you want to implement apps for cross-browser support?
-Do you want to have HTML5 Widget App which can be published through Windows Phone Marketplace, with ability to be updatable?
-Do you want to develop hybrid app in Windwos Phone 7?

Is so and if you are Windows Phone developer this is the right project for you.

Daenet team is proud to announce the first version of the WpWidgetLibrary – HTML Widget for Windows Phone – library for building HTML5 apps on Windows Phone mango.  The latest update for WP 7 enables the usage of HTML5 content via the Marketplace. These Applications always need to be hosted on a webserver so they are not useable offline. Even for Microsoft itself this issue was a problem without solution. With this library you can build HTML 5 Widgets app as a native WP7 app, which you can publish on the windows phone  marketplace and  easily make update for the app. Widgets for WP also tries to solve problems of running HTML page in offline mode on  Windows Phone. Library works so that on the first time installs the HTML5 content in isolated storage by simulating the real hard disk, and paths of the HTML pages, scripts, images etc.

With Widget library you can build cross –platform jQueryMobile HTML5 apps for Windows Phone, and other kind of HTML mobile apps.

More info about this open source project can be found on codeplex site http://wpwidgetlibrary.codeplex.com.

Inspiration about this library and problems handling HTML5 apps in WP7 you can read on Damir’s blog series HTML5 for Windows Phone 7.1+ – Episode I : HTML5 Support and HTML5 for Windows Phone 7.1+ – Episode II : Browsing HTML content.

Feel free to contact us for any problems you may have, or send us feedback about the library.