From concept to reality in 6 weeks - part 6.5

I woke up early today and even though this is Saturday morning, I thought I would go a couple of things and then call it a short day.

The first thing I need to do is fix the Git repo. On my Mac and verified again that it was hosed. I already know it is messed up on Windows so no need to look at that again. By messed up I think I must have created a Git sub-module. No need that silliness so I am just going to delete it and try again. I copied the README.md from the project onto my Desktop. I went to GitHub and deleted the project. That big red button sure looks dangerous they show at the bottom of the Git repo settings. I like to live on the edge so I push it anyway. I then go over to my Windows laptop and copy the VSE files onto my desktop and delete the repo folder as it is totally worthless. I then go into GitHub and create a brand new repo setting the .gitignore to "CSharp", which does everything I need. I then access the repo on my Mac, move the README.md from my desktop into the repo and check it in. I then switch to Windows laptop and use the GitHub app to unpin the old repo and then clone the new one. I go into that folder and move the files from the desktop into the repo. I double click the solution file and clean and force a build in VSE. I also run it to verify everything looks good. I then check in all of the files and switch back to my Mac to make sure they all appear as I expected. Kind of took a while but now I feel much better as my files will not get lost. Not that it is a lot of work, but still.

Next up is making a temporary icon for the Windows 8 app as I am tired of seeing a while box with an "X" in it. It is should be easy to make one quickly like I did for the iPad app. In the VSE project I see 4 default icons. I use the UNIX "file" command to see the size of the files:

Logo.scale-100.png:         PNG image data, 150 x 150, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced

SmallLogo.scale-100.png:    PNG image data, 30 x 30, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced

SplashScreen.scale-100.png: PNG image data, 620 x 300, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced

StoreLogo.scale-100.png:    PNG image data, 50 x 50, 8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced

I go to my handy findicons.com site and enter some keywords and make sure the commercial-use free box is selected and that the transparent background is selected. I find two icons that look reasonable. I save all sizes to my desktop. I then use GIMP to composite a new icon with a transparent background. I start with 150x150 and then scale that one down to 50x50 and 30x30. For the 620x300 splash screen I take the 150x150 logo and then add the company text to the bottom. I export all of the logos to PNG, saving the appropriate names and I am done. I check in the files on my Mac and then sync the repo on Windows and verify the splash screen works and it does! Now I have to figure out how to add a tile to the Metro Start Screen to verify the logos work. It is just not obvious to me how to do that, so I go look up how to do it. That is pretty sad that I have to look it up, but I find the simple and yet no obvious to the casual Windows 8 user like me what to do. Once added properly I see my icon in the tile and I am done with that task.

Since I am moving right along at the speed of Windows, I think I will try to build the app so it can be deployed on another computer. I have no idea how to do that so I search in MSDN for some help and find two lines telling me just how easy it is. Not sure I would have ever figure out those simple steps but I am happy someone found it. I click on the link to "Create App Package..." thinking that I am done and then I see a couple of screens to sign into my Microsoft developer account. I am really expecting success when boom, a big red X of death comes up and tells me:

Your Microsoft account is not registered to submit apps to the Store. To register or check out registration, go the the Windows Developer Portal

I click the link next to the text thinking that will help me. Wait, I am already logged in on my Mac, so I search for help on how to do this. Took me several minutes and finally I found the right page and when I clicked on the Proceed button at the bottom, nothing happened. I opened my Safari console and saw a message an unrecognized character caused a javascript error. I guess I have to do it on my Windows laptop so I switch back over there. This is getting kind of out of hand all of the switching between my wonderful computer and the other one. I am given two choices to register, I can either pay $19 for developer account or $99 for corporate account. I tried the corporate account and that was horrible as it expected me to work for a real company and they would contact an officer of the company to verify I worked there. I guess they don't want my $99 so I switched over to the cheaper $19 version. I am not about to give away my credit card number so I go to my bank site and create a temporary ShopSafe number for the huge $19 charge. Just when I think I am done, the page says I have to validate my charge before I can use the account. I have to check my on-line banking account and check for the MFST charge and enter the code in the developer form. Then I am finally verified and ready to go because I see a page with the text:

Payment account verification 

We successfully verified your payment account.

That took me about as long as it did to find the Git repo and create the icons. Did that really have to be so painful? I then go back to VSE and click on the Retry button hoping for something good to happen. I guess something happened as I have to sign in again to my Microsoft account. This means I also have to "Help us protect your account" but waiting for an email before I can actually login. This is like a virus preventing a virus. I switch over to Mac to check my email, go back to Windows to enter the code and finally I see something good in VSE. I should have timed it but it has taken me over an hour to get to this screen. I have to reserve a unique name in the Windows Store. This is exactly the same problem on the Apple Store. I created the iPad app using my Apple developer account and then we have issues getting it transferred to their enterprise account. This is a prototype, so I am going to ignore this for the second time in the Windows Store and just keep going. The name I choose was not reserved, so I am good, except I see "Package identity in the Store" has a value of None. What is a package identity anyway? I searched for the answer in MSDN and was taken to a developer page that had way too much details for at this stage in my life. I just click the Next button and will ignore that for now. I see they want me to enter a version number but it defaults to 1.1.0.0, so I change it to 1.0.0.0 since this is my first version and I see an ugly red X again, so I quickly change it back to 1.1.0.0 and forgot I ever saw the message. Below that I get to choose what configurations I want to create so I check both "x86" and "x64", but leave the "ARM" box unchecked since Bing Maps do not work for that configuration as VSE warns me when I create a new project or try to load and example that I must set a valid CPU type. I click the Create button and the dialog goes away and I see the Output Console showing that things are building. When it is done the dialog pops back up as everything was successful! Yeah, wait I still have some more unknown number of steps left. Now VSE wants me to "Launch Windows App Certification Kit" to validate my app adheres to Windows Store requirements. I say a high chance of success since my app just is a UI at the moment but this may get interesting. The dialog goes away, I see a modal message popup which I have to accept, I see a DOS window flash up and then the kit is installed on my laptop. I then see a dozen check boxes all checked of things to verify. I leave them all selected and click Next. This process seems to have no end in sight. If the app fails I am going to call it a day. I am going to give up either way actually. I see the app appear on the screen and I tried to close it by mistake. The app validator is gong it automatically when the tests are running. The second time it appears on the screen I just leave it alone. I think this is going to be a weekly thing right before the iteration meeting as this is pretty darn exciting waiting for it to validate my tiny app that does nothing. Maybe next time I will uncheck everything and see what happens. Hopefully most of the time up until now will be first time setup stuff I am seriously hoping that way at least. Now I am beginning to think everyone of those checkboxes requires the app to start up and then be closed. I actually am beginning to like the idea that I have a tool to help me know the Windows 8 app is working properly. On Apple Store submissions you are at the mercy of an Apple employee to run an internal Apple app checker and to tell you why the app was rejected by responding thru iTunes Connect and then you try to re-submit it and hope you did not add anything to make it fail the second round. I finally see the infamous "We are almost done" message and the dialog changed appearance so there is hope. And then the "Overall Result PASSED" in green! I click the Finish button and the dialog closes. Oops, I think I just submitted the app to the actual Windows Store. I think I clicked on the wrong button somewhere as I wanted this to build a local app only. Now I have to figure out how to delete my app from the public Windows Store. I clicked on the Window Store tile and search for the app name and it did not find any matches, which is good. It never ask for price or categories so maybe it did what I wanted after all. Now I have to find where the package was saved to send it to my customer to see if he can install in and get it to run. Hey, I found the MSDN page that describes how to do what I just did. I think this article describes what needs to be done, but that is enough for my half day.