Database Develop

Windows Phone 8 questions

Based on what I've seen today it still has no:
- system dictionary for definition lookup(only for predictive text). The Kindle App does nothing when I press & hold on a word, unlike on my iOS device.
- hi-speed media scrubber for music. you know the little round knob on the progress bar that allows you to move the time index to any point in a song or video.
- unified search aka Local Search(apps, music, videos, contacts, emails)

The music app is pretty bad. I had several attempts to build a proper one, but the developer can not interact with the music library, other than playing existing playlists or songs.
You can't make custom playlists(actually you can, but it very, very, VERY complicated and prone to error and simply does not worth the shot), change the order of music inside the list and stuff like that for a third party app, and that sucks.
There are no new APIs for XNA (which is used to access the songs in the phone) so there is no way of making one.
If there is something I can say it is not right on WP, that's the music app.

mcosmin222 said:
The music app is pretty bad. I had several attempts to build a proper one, but the developer can not interact with the music library, other than playing existing playlists or songs.
You can't make custom playlists(actually you can, but it very, very, VERY complicated and prone to error and simply does not worth the shot), change the order of music inside the list and stuff like that for a third party app, and that sucks.
There are no new APIs for XNA (which is used to access the songs in the phone) so there is no way of making one.
If there is something I can say it is not right on WP, that's the music app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does that imply that there´s the same limitation for video? ...and ...as a result of that a videoplayer with support for more codecs is very unlikely to ever happen?

TarKin said:
Does that imply that there´s the same limitation for video? ...and ...as a result of that a videoplayer with support for more codecs is very unlikely to ever happen?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The File-Assosciation feature in WP8 works like this. Your App can define certain file endings (e.g. .mkv) which it can handle. If those are found on a SD-Card or downloaded the according registered App is then started for those files. The App can then do whatever it is it does as long as it keeps to reading the file (the original can't be manipulated although the app could copy it into it's isolated storage and manipulate it their). But there is one Caveat - there are several file extensions that are reserved for the OS which means that 3rd party Apps can't register for them. One of them is .mp3. Avi is another one of those (you can look them up in MSDN).
.mkv on the other hand is an extension that Windows Phone itself does not know so people could build Apps that would be able to consume them. Given that we now have Native Code capabilities writing a decoder or recompiling one written for another platform is possible, though it remains to be seen wether anyone will put the effort into it.

StevieBallz said:
The File-Assosciation feature in WP8 works like this. Your App can define certain file endings (e.g. .mkv) which it can handle. If those are found on a SD-Card or downloaded the according registered App is then started for those files. The App can then do whatever it is it does as long as it keeps to reading the file (the original can't be manipulated although the app could copy it into it's isolated storage and manipulate it their). But there is one Caveat - there are several file extensions that are reserved for the OS which means that 3rd party Apps can't register for them. One of them is .mp3. Avi is another one of those (you can look them up in MSDN).
.mkv on the other hand is an extension that Windows Phone itself does not know so people could build Apps that would be able to consume them. Given that we now have Native Code capabilities writing a decoder or recompiling one written for another platform is possible, though it remains to be seen wether anyone will put the effort into it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok. i was mainly into psp dev. before, and never had a winphone in my hands so far.
but if you say that´s possible, then i´ll go for the lumia920, reg. for a dev account and see what i can do

StevieBallz said:
The File-Assosciation feature in WP8 works like this. Your App can define certain file endings (e.g. .mkv) which it can handle. If those are found on a SD-Card or downloaded the according registered App is then started for those files. The App can then do whatever it is it does as long as it keeps to reading the file (the original can't be manipulated although the app could copy it into it's isolated storage and manipulate it their). But there is one Caveat - there are several file extensions that are reserved for the OS which means that 3rd party Apps can't register for them. One of them is .mp3. Avi is another one of those (you can look them up in MSDN).
.mkv on the other hand is an extension that Windows Phone itself does not know so people could build Apps that would be able to consume them. Given that we now have Native Code capabilities writing a decoder or recompiling one written for another platform is possible, though it remains to be seen wether anyone will put the effort into it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't had the chance to look over what the native code can do and what it can't do, but it is to be expected that it will have limitations, just like C# has.

You can render images (obviously) and output them using Direct3D which is pretty much what e.g. VLC does on the Desktop. You have complete read access to files on the SD-Card for your registered filetypes. MKV could be registered, MP3 or AVI could not (because they are in use by the system already).
But of course you would not be able to offload processing to the dedicated decoding units like with the built-in Codecs, which will mean more processor utilization and worse battery life. Still as a programmer I don't see too many actual road blocks (but it's a bumpy road to do this to be sure).
@TarKin: before you drop the money perhaps it would be best to start looking into the SDK. I'm not an expert in Multimedia-programming by any measure so you might be able to spot problems in there beforehand.
If you're still going for a L920 with these uncertainties for your use-case: welcome to the family, I'm anxiously awaiting mine.

[Q] Things to know before beginning a music player app for WP8

First of all, hello to everybody. I have just joined xdaDevelopers.
To business now..
I recently bought my first Windows Phone (Nokia Lumia 520). One of the reasons for getting it was for developing my own WP8 apps.
I would like to start with a music player app - one that can play mp3 files from phone memory and SD card; arrange songs according to name, albums and artists; create playlists; have capabilties of fast foward and rewind (seeking); and recognise album arts.
What do I need to know before I can start building it?
I have zero experience in app development; I am a web designer.
I noticed that there are very few "polished" music players (which function properly as well as have a nice UI) in the WP store. Any particular reason for that (other than the platform being relatively new)?
I created this post mainly because the lack of quality music players appeared a bit strange to me. I have heard that a particular file type can be accessed by only one app (please correct me if I am wrong). So does it mean that one has to somehow uninstall the default music player in order to use the newly downloaded one?
For instance, I have "Adobe Reader" which can read PDFs from my MicroSD card. But the "PDF Reader" app (which I installed just yesterday) cannot even find them! So I had to uninstall the latter.
So I wanted to know if there was something about WP8 that doesn't allow such things - if these "security measures", which render apps like file managers less useful, are also responsible for the lack of music players in this otherwise very fantastic platform.
Please note that I come from Android, and am very new to Windows Phone platform. So kindly point out if there's something incorrect about my assumptions.
Thanks and regards.

Hi,
Welcome to Windows Phone. The Lumia 520 is a great choice in my humble opinion. In regards to why there are so few music apps, there are probably several reasons. One such is the fact, that the easiest way to make one is to integrate with the built-in music features, which however limits you in several ways, like not being able to add more file types, not being able to customize the experience too much, playlisting is limit as far as I know, which basically puts you in the position, that the only actual improvement you can do upon that is implementing a new streaming service. The other route is to implement your own music player, but then you're going to have issues making it work in the background (not to mention, that implementing a music player isn't entirely simple).
gdebojyoti said:
What do I need to know before I can start building it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Make sure you have hardware for it. I recommend a minimum of Windows 8 Pro 64bit, but you can find instructions for Windows 7 on this forum as well. You'll need VT-x support on your CPU, plenty of RAM.
2. Download and install the WP8 SDK.
3. Once you open Visual Studio, you can start by creating a new project, you'll need a UI project (I recommend Windows Phone App or HTML5 App templates) and a music playback project (WP Audio Playback Agent -OR- WP Audio Streaming Agent).
4. For tutorials on how to get started I usually go to Pluralsight.com, because I have a subscription there, and they're plain awesome, but I'm sure there are a bunch of other sources as well, which are for free.
gdebojyoti said:
For instance, I have "Adobe Reader" which can read PDFs from my MicroSD card. But the "PDF Reader" app (which I installed just yesterday) cannot even find them! So I had to uninstall the latter.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have both Adobe Reader and PDF Reader installed, once you tap on a PDF file (say after downloading one in IE) an option should appear for you to select which app you wanna open it with.
gdebojyoti said:
So I wanted to know if there was something about WP8 that doesn't allow such things - if these "security measures", which render apps like file managers less useful, are also responsible for the lack of music players in this otherwise very fantastic platform.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can install and use as many audio/music apps you like, but obviously only one can have the background music feature used at one time. (You can only have one music playing in the background).
Also:
"Developers must pay an annual subscription fee of $99, (this, according to Todd Brix, the General Manager for Windows Phone Apps and Store team, is currently on an ongoing promotion at $19) to become an App Hub member and submit apps to the Windows Phone Store. There's no limit on the number of free submissions for paid apps. There's a limit of 100 free submissions for free apps; thereafter, there's a fee of $19.99 per submission for free apps." - Wikipedia
Hope I helped, and happy coding!
:fingers-crossed:

@TheGoldrocker: Thank you for your reply. It did clear up quite a few things.
As of now, I am okay with "integrating with the built-in music features" as you said.
What I want to do is modify the UI and UX a bit. Some of the features can be as follows -
1. Introducing a scroll bar;
2. Option to get rid of the grouping system by name;
3. Control over the font size;
4. Allowing the currently playing song to continue if I select the song (currently it starts playing from the beginning);
5. Enabling the seeking feature (tapping the timeline of the song so as to play from that point of time);
6. Having a tile feature in the start screen with options to pause, change song, etc (number of options would depend upon the length of the song);
7. Showing the album art of the currently playing song in the tile;
8. Having an animated background in the app (just a wide photo which slowly slides from left to right).
Am I allowed to do the above?

You're welcome.
"Integrating with the built-in music features" doesn't mean you get to rewrite the UI/functionality of the current Music+Videos app. What it means is, you get to use the built-in classes for simplifying music playback in your new app. You'll still have to build up a new UI around your classes, you'll also have to write quite a few lines of code for the playback functionality (but obviously way less than if you tried to write your own music player from scratch).
Now sadly I cannot answer all of your questions with absolute certainty, because I haven't tried writing a music player yet, but I'll give them a shot.
I numbered your list:
gdebojyoti said:
1. Introducing a scroll bar;
2. Option to get rid of the grouping system by name;
3. Control over the font size;
4. Allowing the currently playing song to continue if I select the song (currently it starts playing from the beginning);
5. Enabling the seeking feature (tapping the timeline of the song so as to play from that point of time);
6. Having a tile feature in the start screen with options to pause, change song, etc (number of options would depend upon the length of the song);
7. Showing the album art of the currently playing song in the tile;
8. Having an animated background in the app (just a wide photo which slowly slides from left to right).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. Yes, since you'll have to make a new UI from scratch, and you'll have the ability to include any logic behind it you want.
2. Yes, the grouping can be avoided AFAIK.
3. Same as 1.
4. Same as 1.
5. Don't think so. Someone else with more knowledge will have to answer this to be sure, though.
6. If you mean a tile on the start screen, which, when tapped will play/stop/next/prev/whatever and STAY on the start screen? No. Tiles (sadly) always open a program (even if for only a millisecond). You can use this for deeplinking to favorite songs/playlists/streaming services though, which is cool.
7. Same as 1.
8. Same as 1.
Hope I helped.

Thank you for your reply.
TheGoldrocker said:
6. If you mean a tile on the start screen, which, when tapped will play/stop/next/prev/whatever and STAY on the start screen? No. Tiles (sadly) always open a program (even if for only a millisecond). You can use this for deeplinking to favorite songs/playlists/streaming services though, which is cool.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
By "deeplinking", do you mean pinning songs to the start screen by 'long pressing' on them?
I do hope that Microsoft introduces interactive tiles in some future update. Sort of start screen widgets.

gdebojyoti said:
By "deeplinking", do you mean pinning songs to the start screen by 'long pressing' on them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Deeplinking is launching an app with a link toward a specific page with parameters. Imagine it as a URL to a specific page on a website. If your app and pages support it, you could tap on a tile (say on the start screen), which opens your app, and instantly navigates to a playlist, album, song, whatever you made that tile link to.
Pinning items to the start screen can be triggered by anything you want. You, the coder, decides how you're gonna allow the user to pin their songs/albums/playlists/artists/whatever.
Here's a little tutorial on this topic:
http://wp.qmatteoq.com/first-steps-...-links/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Okay, thanks. I'll have a look at that.

To make a media player for windows phone is to know insanity.
Why we no join forces?
There are a couple fo things the guys here forgot to tell you:
You can not read Mp3 files from SD card.
You can not read mp3 files from the user music folder.
You only have access to web resources or your app's isolated storage.
You basically have to engineer a way to get them to the app storage.

mcosmin222 said:
To make a media player for windows phone is to know insanity.
Why we no join forces?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think I have enough knowledge to be able to help you. I am just a beginner.
mcosmin222 said:
You can not read Mp3 files from SD card.
You can not read mp3 files from the user music folder.
You only have access to web resources or your app's isolated storage.
You basically have to engineer a way to get them to the app storage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, that's why I will try to "integrate with the built-in music features". Hopefully it will be okay then.
I am not trying to make the next best thing in the music player app category.
I am just trying to make one which has a slightly different UI and is able to play mp3s.
Sort of a project of mine.
By the way, can someone please tell me if I can use technologies like HTML5 to create this app? Actually I don't know C#.
Or should I learn C# before attempting this app?

gdebojyoti said:
I don't think I have enough knowledge to be able to help you. I am just a beginner.
Well, that's why I will try to "integrate with the built-in music features". Hopefully it will be okay then.
I am not trying to make the next best thing in the music player app category.
I am just trying to make one which has a slightly different UI and is able to play mp3s.
Sort of a project of mine.
By the way, can someone please tell me if I can use technologies like HTML5 to create this app? Actually I don't know C#.
Or should I learn C# before attempting this app?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can not integrate with the built-in player.
There are too many limitations to explain. You will see.
Yes, learn C#

Okay.

Enhanced Spotify Management

The stock media remote app seems to work fine with Spotify playing on the phone, however it would be pretty cool to see a spotify-specific app, maybe with the following features:
- like track
- albumart
- track/album name
- playlist selection
There are a few remote apps on the play store, but they are PC to phone, an existing phone to phone one may work, if one exists?
Any one have any idea's if the above is possible?

Aghh I just asked this on a different thread!
I don't know if a "Remote Control" app exists for Android, but if it does, it would still probably looks awful on the Gear, since it won't be optimized for it.
Hopefully there could be something created or "hacked" to, at least, transmit song info to the Gear native application. An Xposed module would be awesome!

[APP][5.0+] Youtube Player for Android Auto - Pre app fieldwork

Hi guys.
As I have mentioned it before I have started working on a YouTube Player for Android Auto, but since I'm not a big youtuber myself I will like to get some input from you guys on how this should app work.
My thought till now are:
1) When you are outside Android Auto, you will need to open the app, give permission to access your content and sync your playlists to the app.
2) When in Android Auto, the media player will contain entries for each PlayList and all the items of a playlist will be listed as subitems. This part will work as any other media app.
3) Video playback, this will be on the fifth tab, same menu structure, but it will also display video, of course only when the car is stopped, other than that video playback will be disabled.
4) Provide search for individual songs.
- Is there any other way you usually use Youtube beside created playlists, if yes please tell me so I can understand what should I build.
Sync before use - Why is it needed?
- To be able to use the YouTube API which gives me access to your playlist and content I need to create a developer API. The API is limited to 1.000.000 trade units per day, every query has it's own unit value (not necessarily 1) so if I don't sync the playlist and use a fetch as needed approach, I will risk to run out of trade units when the user base grows bigger.
Any comments suggestions are welcomed.

Hello, I am very interested in this application.
It would be very useful if you could choose the quality of the video.
I want buy it

Hi,
Why a YouTube player, and not any other type of player? Several opensource players with local support exists. Why not use some of these as a base?

manos78 said:
Hi,
Why a YouTube player, and not any other type of player? Several opensource players with local support exists. Why not use some of these as a base?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Local players do exist for audio, and it's easy to create an app for AA for them, but YouTube is more problematic, and yeah it's a bit against youtube policy because you shouldn't have sound without video, so officially that app will never be created (maybe with youtube red).
However this project did not receive too much attention so it's on a backburner at the moment, probably till end of November.

Emil Borconi said:
Local players do exist for audio, and it's easy to create an app for AA for them, but YouTube is more problematic, and yeah it's a bit against youtube policy because you shouldn't have sound without video, so officially that app will never be created (maybe with youtube red).
However this project did not receive too much attention so it's on a backburner at the moment, probably till end of November.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ahh, Ok! You think in audio only YouTube player.
I hope someone will start to develop a Xposed module that "rewrites" the MainActivity of any selected App and add AA support on-the-fly! This will be more similar to MirrorLink (not supported in a lot of devices).
Regards.

manos78 said:
Ahh, Ok! You think in audio only YouTube player.
I hope someone will start to develop a Xposed module that "rewrites" the MainActivity of any selected App and add AA support on-the-fly! This will be more similar to MirrorLink (not supported in a lot of devices).
Regards.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Audio only + video when the car is parked/not moving.

Video Player app for Android Auto, maybe based to VLC that is open source would be very useful and i'll buy it surely

Emil Borconi said:
Local players do exist for audio, and it's easy to create an app for AA for them, but YouTube is more problematic, and yeah it's a bit against youtube policy because you shouldn't have sound without video, so officially that app will never be created (maybe with youtube red).
However this project did not receive too much attention so it's on a backburner at the moment, probably till end of November.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why isn't there any more attention for this?
Listen to Youtube playlists and watching video while parking would be a killer feature for AA.

Excellent App idea ?

Would love this app

Great !
We wait youtube app to android auto ! Please <3<3<3

uzakask said:
We wait youtube app to android auto ! Please <3<3<3
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's my attempt to make YouTube work on Android auto.
www.thekirankumar.com/blog/2017/12/29/play-youtube-video-android-auto-app
It's an apk you download and install on phone and it allowd use of YouTube mobile site on Android auto. Enjoy !

Hi all here,
I am the author of what's called an unofficial Android Auto SDK, a piece of software
which allows creating custom Android Auto apps.
Because the poster of the previous message used this SDK, I believe it's
important that I quote my statement about video-in-motion AA apps from
the thread linked above also here. Please read below.
Regards,
martoreto
martoreto said:
Dear all,
it is a good moment to say my final word specifically about the kind of apps
which allow playing videos on the head unit.
I think these don't need much comment:
It's ok to have a movie together on a great trip in middle of nowhere, when stopped.
It's not ok to watch a movie while driving. It doesn't need any comment.
It's totally ok for the passenger to watch a movie on his/her own device.
It's not ok for a passenger to watch a movie on a display in front of the driver.
It's ok to show off how a wonderful head unit I have which can play YT, but not while driving.
It's not ok to watch a movie while driving just to do a forbidden thing.
There's no "it's ok" scenario here for playing movies while in motion. Please share if you
know some. I'm pretty sure these are very uncommon or borderline ok.
Those "it's not ok" may be tempting. Because the driver may be bored, pissed off,
deny the danger of driving distracted, willing to show off, overestimate his/her skills,
name your reason.
Words displayed in the dash or written on a website or anywhere else would rarely
prevent it.
It's not that if movies are not possible in these cases, the driver will definitely do
something else stupid, like playing the video on the phone itself or become even more
angry and aggressive on road.
I want to say that clearly: I believe no apps should allow playing videos on the
car display while the car is in motion. Period.
I ask all here to not write such apps and not promote and talk about them here.
Instead of supporting those who create these apps just to satisfy popular demand of
doing a forbidden thing, please support those who actually care about creatively
and carefully designing the apps to be useful and which assertively, yet nicely
prevent being used in a stupid way.
Regards,
martoreto
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Post deleted.

Youtube auto Android auto

Disable "Voice Search while driving" limitation

So every time I want to load some playlist or folder through my AA music player (Cloudplayer), after 3-4 taps I get this message and I can't do anything other than actually stop the car (not always possible or advisable anyway) for it to receive commands. Voice search within the music player is clearly not working (it can't browse folders or playlists) so it makes the whole experience of using my phone for music streaming super annoying, especially on longer journeys.
Are there any ways to bypass this on a non-rootable phone (P20 Pro)? I mean thanks Google for thinking about safety but I need to do more screen tapping to set the aircon how I want it or browse trip details than I am allowed to tap on the AA app...

I don't have the phone you have, but have a Pioneer unit running Android Auto, and for me the lockout was part of the reason why I decided to stop using AA.
As far as I know with Android Auto, your request is not possible.
Your only option is to just not use AA and use something else.
In my case, I've just ordered a different headunit. But you may get away with just using different apps on your phone and avoid AA altogether.