26
Feb
11

Wp7dev: ad control during development

By mattdavid Leave a Comment
Categories: wp7

I forget this all of the time, mainly because I’ve only done it 5 times (the number of apps I’ve submitted using the ad control).  This is for Silverlight projects only.  I haven’t done any XNA on the phone yet, so it might be different.

So, to use the ad control during development:

  1. Add a reference to Microsoft.Advertising.Mobile.UI.dll to the project and add the AdControl to a page.
  2. Set the AdModel to Contextual.
  3. Set the AdUnitId to Image480_80
  4. Set the ApplicationId to test_client

This is what you should see in Blend when it’s all setup:

Blend_AdControl_setup

Oh, and here’s a tip that will hopefully save someone some time.  If you’re adding in the AdControl at the end of your development, make sure you re-run CapabilityDetection to make sure you have all the capabilities you’ll need to display ads. 

If you don’t your AdControl will disappear and you’ll see these errors when debugging:

A first chance exception of type ‘System.UnauthorizedAccessException’ occurred in Microsoft.Phone.dll
A first chance exception of type ‘System.UnauthorizedAccessException’ occurred in Microsoft.Phone.dll
‘taskhost.exe’ (Managed): Loaded ‘System.SR.dll’
A first chance exception of type ‘System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException’ occurred in mscorlib.dll
A first chance exception of type ‘System.IO.IsolatedStorage.IsolatedStorageException’ occurred in mscorlib.dll
‘taskhost.exe’ (Managed): Loaded ‘System.Windows.debug.resources.dll’
A first chance exception of type ‘System.Net.WebException’ occurred in System.Windows.dll
A first chance exception of type ‘System.Net.WebException’ occurred in System.Windows.dll
A first chance exception of type ‘System.Net.WebException’ occurred in Microsoft.Advertising.Mobile.UI.dll

 

17
Dec
10

WordPress for Windows Phone 7

By mattdavid Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

I’ve never really liked the idea of blogging from a phone. I tried it on my old iPhone once, but the experience was terrible.

If it was so awful, why try again? Well, I find that I do have ideas for posts while at work, but if I dont at least get a draft done, I won’t do anything with it later or just flat out forget.

Here’s what the experience has been like so far, not much better than the last time I tried this.

First, setup was a pain. I kept getting some “Data at the root level is invalid…” when adding a self hosted site. The reason for this was I wasn’t typing in the full domain name (www.mattdavid.net). Once I did, it worked. Also having to type in the xmlrpc.php bit at the end was something the software should’ve handled for me.

<<the rest of the post was finished on the web>>

Creating and editing post is pretty bad.  I had to stop and finish this post on the web.   When creating a post, it apparrently defaults to publish.  While I thought I was saving a draft, it was published instead.  Whoops. 

Next, when typing it doesn’t have auto-correct or the helpful predictive text bar (or whatever you call it).  I have been spoiled by those things.  It was painful for me to go back and correct all of the “i”s and the “wasnt”s, etc. 

Lastly, if you want to go back and edit a post that doesn’t all fit into the textbox, I hope what you need to fix is visible.  I surely couldn’t figure out a way to scroll down to fix the rest of this post.

I’m waiting for an update before I try that again.

Not Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

14
Dec
10

Color coordinated

By mattdavid Leave a Comment
Categories: Design

Next time you need to find colors that go well together, check out kuler.  It’s an Adobe site dedicated to creating, sharing and exploring color schemes.

13
Dec
10

Time for a reboot

By mattdavid Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized

I guess I’ve put it off long enough, it’s time for a reboot.

I never really updated this blog with any regularity before, mainly because I felt like I had to post about something new or whatever.  Yeah, I don’t have the kind of time to be on the bleeding edge of anything.

So, this will mainly be a place for me to brain dump.  It’s not going to be new stuff by any stretch of the imagination (I am a bit behind).  If you read this blog, you’ll probably would’ve seen whatever’s on it before.  Probably written better, too.