This is the second part in a series of posts about reducing the amount of data transferred between ASP.NET Web API or Azure Mobile App Service and the (mobile) client. In this post we will squeeze a little bit more from our DTOs (Data Transfer Objects).

Not long ago I wrote a blog post about Responsive Pivot Headers in Universal Windows Platform apps. Paul responded to this post asking how to change the background of the selected item, just like the example I posted on top of the post. It's a great question and I'm sorry I didn't cover this part so the pivot looks more like the example image. An omission I want to correct with this blog post.

These days JSON is used a lot. For storing data, for storing settings, for describing other JSON files, and often for transporting information between server and client using DTOs (Data Transfer Objects). Recently I was monitoring the data transferred from one of my own Web API controllers to a mobile app. I discovered the amount of data transferred was way more then expected. This inspired me try to reduce the size of the transferred data. In this and following blog posts I will describe the different options you can use and combine. You can download the source code at the end of my article.

My PC just got upgraded to the latest Windows 10 Insiders build (slow ring, build 10565) and suddenly a couple of VMs were missing from the Hyper-V Manager. I first suspected the security settings on the directories were the problem, but my changes didn't fix anything. After browsing around the internet, I found a couple of fixes that might help you if you have the same problem.

For a Universal Windows App I wanted to implement a Pivot. Reading the guidelines for tabs and pivots by Microsoft I got inspired by the examples given. However, no code samples are supplied so there is no indication how to actually create this in your own Xaml app. In this blogpost I will show the different steps to get the basics done and I will supply the source code for you to use.

I received a couple of comments on my article about making the pull-down-to-refresh work with a Windows Phone virtualizing list control. The problem was that the functionality stopped working after navigating away from the page containing the ItemsControl. Today I committed the code to GitHub to fix this issue.

Every Microsoft Dynamics CRM developer has faced this problem: How to get the entity type code for your custom entity in JavaScript. If you need the entity type code for the current form there are several supported ways to get it. But when you want the entity type code for a different custom entity, you are in trouble. The SDK has no real solution for this, and hard-coding is no option as the numbers can change per deployment. Digging through the client side object model I found a nice, although still unsupported, treasure which works with CRM 2011 and up, including the latest installment: 2015 update 1.

The other day I was working on a Windows Phone app. I wanted to add a "pull down to refresh" panel to a large list of images. Just like the Facebook and Twitter apps have. As Microsoft does not provide this functionality in their default controls I started searching the web if somebody else has build something like this already. I found a blog post by Jason Ginchereau where he provided this functionality for Windows Phone 7. In my app I use an ItemsControl with a VirtualizingStackPanel to prevent memory issues. After I added the PullDownToRefreshPanel control to my list and started testing it on my phone, I ran into some issues. In this blog post I will describe my contributions to fix these 2 issues and I will supply the source code for you to use.