December 2011 Blog Posts

Useful error messages from a Serialiser? Surely not

As many people will tell you I am a miserable old git at times and love a good moan. However I think it only fair to give credit where credit is due. I was updating some code today that used Microsoft’s XmlSerializer and had types decorated with DataContract attributes. My experience of serialisers and how they give out help via error messages is that clearly the person who wrote it thinks “I am super smart and can write a serialiser from scratch. If you are too stupid to configure your types for serialisation then tough ####.” If you are...

Making sure your WP7 app updates successfully

I am going to be pushing out a new version of my app soon. Whilst the app brings new design, imagery and ads I also took the opportunity to update namespaces and some class names. Towards the end of my update development I began worrying if data that had already been saved on the device would be compatible with the new code. The last thing I wanted was an unrecoverable crash after the update. After searching around I found this great article Debugging the Update Process for Windows Phone Apps from Doug Holland. Doug’s a smart guy...