Windows Phone 8.1 Development Issues

[weightypillow]

Mehdoh developer has now pulled all of his apps off the app store, he says the reason is due to the changes made in WP8.1.

Now I am wondering, is it hard or harder to develop quality apps on WP than it is on iOS and Android?
Android and iOS both have higher quality apps in almost all cases, now we know they put more development time into those platforms because they have a high market share. But is it also due to the fact that WP is also harder to develop for than the other two platforms ? Windows Phone apps seem to be slower, less responsive

Has 8.1 made this better for developers ? that is why there are changes?

I just hope that it isn't harder to develop for because that effectively makes the app problem a bigger problem.

 

[irvin792]

I suck as a comedian

 

[ctafield]

Why am I lazy?

Also, my apps are ALL still there... and 4 (FOUR) were updated yesterday alone. Someone has their wires crossed.

 

[Ray Adams]

He is not lazy. May be just tired to fight with MS . As a developer I can say that in new WP8.1 MS did plenty o job to bring W8 and WP8 together, but they also did hell of a job to force people to use RT instead of Silverlight. For example they just dropped support for background music playing for SL apps. Why? Who knows.

New RT environment also not excellent, it is slow sometimes, it differs from SL. If you never wrote anything for Windows 8, it will be hard for you start writing RT apps for WP! Now imagine that you have big project, with tons of libraries and you just cannot convert them to RT because you used SL. What you will do? Some devs will just stop developing for WP.

How many times MS will break everything with new version of Windows Phone? They make WP8.1 excellent for users, but pain in back for developers! If MS think platform will live without devs, they are wrong! No platform could survive without dev's support.

 

[weightypillow]

See this makes no sense to me. WP in my opinion isn't lacking in the amount of apps, I am happy with the apps but the quality of most of them is sub par.. Then you get an excellent Twitter app like Mehdoh and they make it hard for developers... I would think they would have made it better or easier for developers...

As a developer can a better app be made with Android or iOS though? Are the dev tools/ coding required , easier or better ? That's the main thing I wanna know

 

[weightypillow]

Why am I lazy?

Also, my apps are ALL still there... and 4 (FOUR) were updated yesterday alone. Someone has their wires crossed.

Its on WPPowerUser.. Perhaps contact them that their article is incorrect, thanks for developing Mehdoh though, I really enjoy it

 

[ctafield]

Thank you for the kind words

Oh, those tweets that WMPU posted were deleted a few moments after I posted them. That site never contacted me... so wouldn't put any weight in their articles. Not that they need to I guess, but hey ho, would have been nice I suppose.

My problems are that I can't upgrade several of my apps (namely mehdoh and cloudoh) to Silverlight 8.1 - ie to take advantage of the newer API features. Reason being is that MS removed the ability to have background audio playback in Siverlight 8.1. Cloudoh needs it, as it's a soundcloud app... so that's kinda stuck. Mehdoh "needs" it as it also does Soundcloud. Now, there might be the possibility that a WP8.1 specific version of Mehdoh JUST does Twitter... which from what I can gather on Twitter today would be preferable as no one seems to use the soundcloud and instagram parts of it anyway. We'll see. App's going no where though.

To their credit, Microsoft have emailed me directly (after the WMPU post) so I'm chatting with them to see what's what.

 

[neitin]

Thank you for the update Mehdoh is the best and favourite twitter client for me. Losing it would mean giving away my 1520

 

[weightypillow]

A twitter only Mehdoh would be great, since I don't use the instagram and soundcloud parts of the app. Either way I rate it as the best

 

[meddyrainzo]

Thank you for the kind words

Oh, those tweets that WMPU posted were deleted a few moments after I posted them. That site never contacted me... so wouldn't put any weight in their articles. Not that they need to I guess, but hey ho, would have been nice I suppose.

My problems are that I can't upgrade several of my apps (namely mehdoh and cloudoh) to Silverlight 8.1 - ie to take advantage of the newer API features. Reason being is that MS removed the ability to have background audio playback in Siverlight 8.1. Cloudoh needs it, as it's a soundcloud app... so that's kinda stuck. Mehdoh "needs" it as it also does Soundcloud. Now, there might be the possibility that a WP8.1 specific version of Mehdoh JUST does Twitter... which from what I can gather on Twitter today would be preferable as no one seems to use the soundcloud and instagram parts of it anyway. We'll see. App's going no where though.

To their credit, Microsoft have emailed me directly (after the WMPU post) so I'm chatting with them to see what's what.

Really appreciate this explanation you just gave. I was unhappy when I read the post on WMPU. It's never good news losing a developer.
Hopefully the change to RT and the lack of SL won't be so difficult to adapt to.
Cheers mate and keep up the good work!

 

[Im_Q]

Thank you for the kind words

Oh, those tweets that WMPU posted were deleted a few moments after I posted them. That site never contacted me... so wouldn't put any weight in their articles. Not that they need to I guess, but hey ho, would have been nice I suppose.

My problems are that I can't upgrade several of my apps (namely mehdoh and cloudoh) to Silverlight 8.1 - ie to take advantage of the newer API features. Reason being is that MS removed the ability to have background audio playback in Siverlight 8.1. Cloudoh needs it, as it's a soundcloud app... so that's kinda stuck. Mehdoh "needs" it as it also does Soundcloud. Now, there might be the possibility that a WP8.1 specific version of Mehdoh JUST does Twitter... which from what I can gather on Twitter today would be preferable as no one seems to use the soundcloud and instagram parts of it anyway. We'll see. App's going no where though.

To their credit, Microsoft have emailed me directly (after the WMPU post) so I'm chatting with them to see what's what.

Purely out of curiosity, what background audio api are you using? I haven't come across any documentations on background audio being removed and MSDN lists it as supported it seems. I haven't done too much research on this so excuse me if I'm missing something.

 

[SSgt Bruskowiz]

We must cherries our developers and not burn them down.....help them wherever needed. Betatestings, tips, ideas or whatever.

 

[Ray Adams]

Purely out of curiosity, what background audio api are you using? I haven't come across any documentations on background audio being removed and MSDN lists it as supported it seems. I haven't done too much research on this so excuse me if I'm missing something.

Background audio is only supported in RT apps, not supported in SL apps. But SL apps, compiled for wp8.0 still can use it even in wp8.1. So it was that move from MS to force devs to use other tech . I am currently working on Folder Play apps as a replacement os music player in Pocket File Manager, and I can say that RT development is awful. Player works while I deploy it to device, but refuse to work when people download it from store !!! And this app was certified today 10 times!

 

[Im_Q]

Background audio is only supported in RT apps, not supported in SL apps. But SL apps, compiled for wp8.0 still can use it even in wp8.1. So it was that move from MS to force devs to use other tech . I am currently working on Folder Play apps as a replacement os music player in Pocket File Manager, and I can say that RT development is awful. Player works while I deploy it to device, but refuse to work when people download it from store !!! And this app was certified today 10 times!

I don't think it's fair to say that Microsoft did that to force devs to use a certain technology. If that were the case they would've not added any new feature to SL apps. If I had to guess, it probably broke when they moved SL apps over to "the modern context" as they call it. The way that SL8.1 sits on top of the OS is significantly different so maybe not everything was done properly in time. Just like WinRT for phone doesn't have support for VOIP APIs. Not everything was done in time.

I haven't done any background audio stuff in WinRT but my experience so far hasn't been bad. It has its ups and downs. Sorry to hear that it hasn't been smooth sailing for you.





Sent from my Lumia 920 using Tapatalk

 

[Xpider_MX]

What about the benefits of universal apps? for both developers (revenue) and users.

 

[Ray Adams]

Today I spent one hour with Microsoft support regarding the issue I have with music player. Not much of help, but I found what was wrong.

When app sideloaded in developer's device it works, but when you publish it and download from store, it stopped. BackgroundMusicPlayer instance in background cannot play files when the file is not located in application storage. It gives error. So, if your app do not have permission to access files directly, your won't be able to make player which plays files (by path) , located somewhere in device memory. Your app MUSH have permission to access files without Folder/File picker.

So Microsoft, what are doing with WP for developers?! Why breaking everything? You removed audio player for SL, but added it for RT and screwed it too. I just cannot imagine audio player which stores ALL music files in its own local storage!

That's why devs do not like WP8.1 and new universal apps

 

[Vitor Salvatore Pierce]

I was going to port a SL 8.0 app to 8.1 and even discouraged...

 

[anon(8657436)]

Thank you for the kind words

Oh, those tweets that WMPU posted were deleted a few moments after I posted them. That site never contacted me... so wouldn't put any weight in their articles. Not that they need to I guess, but hey ho, would have been nice I suppose.

My problems are that I can't upgrade several of my apps (namely mehdoh and cloudoh) to Silverlight 8.1 - ie to take advantage of the newer API features. Reason being is that MS removed the ability to have background audio playback in Siverlight 8.1. Cloudoh needs it, as it's a soundcloud app... so that's kinda stuck. Mehdoh "needs" it as it also does Soundcloud. Now, there might be the possibility that a WP8.1 specific version of Mehdoh JUST does Twitter... which from what I can gather on Twitter today would be preferable as no one seems to use the soundcloud and instagram parts of it anyway. We'll see. App's going no where though.

To their credit, Microsoft have emailed me directly (after the WMPU post) so I'm chatting with them to see what's what.

I din't know MS contacted their devs so directly. They really do care. Maybe.