Hours after Emergency Chat 2.2 for Windows 10 was released on Monday, I found a bug it had created that I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have been possible to suss out via unit testing. I fixed it right away, since it only took adding one line of XAML to fix, tested the app thoroughly over a few more days, then published an update today after finding no other issues.
Here are the update notes as non-technical customers will see them on the Microsoft Store app:
Fixed the caption buttons not displaying correctly in some cases on the desktop.
And, in case you’re a developer who’s interested, here’s the commit message of the single Git commit containing the fix:
Fix caption buttons drawing the wrong backgrounds on window deactivation when a light/dark mode other than the system default is used
Now, shipping a point release shortly after a major release to a digital distribution platform that only displays update notes for the most recent release, such as the Microsoft Store, presents a unique (and, IMO, completely unnecessary) conundrum:
If the notes contain the changelog for just the point release, customers who haven’t seen the notes for the major release will never see them after the point release becomes available, unless those notes are made available elsewhere such as on the app’s website (as is the case with Emergency Chat for Windows), or in the app’s README file or About section.
There are several ways an app publisher can approach this:
Yes… that’s today. If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you can probably guess that I really haven’t had the energy to do pretty much anything, be it updating the main site, updating the LEGO Room, updating Emergency Chat, or blogging about Talk.CSS, UWP development (that post I mentioned previously? Yeah) or last Saturday’s Insider Dev Tour that I made it to this time around (praise God!).
To be clear, that date had been on my mind all week and I just could not get around to it. But thanks to this tweet by Rudy Huyn I finally got the kick I so desperately needed to put together the update for both apps, from nothing, and ship it — all in less than 10 hours (and even though I’m not sure Windows Phone 8.1 users would actually be able to obtain the update now that it’s the last day, I went ahead with it if for nothing else than my own closure):
Windows Phone developers, today is your last chance to submit an update for your apps and add a banner/message explaining to wp8/wp8.1 users that you won't be able to update the app anymore starting Monday. We had a lot of fun altogether. #wpdev#rippic.twitter.com/Vpen0srRPK
If you’ve been using my app on Windows Phone 8.1 over the years, thank you for supporting it, and be sure to check out the Windows 10 version (which will continue to receive updates) on your PC, tablet or phone!
Here is the changelog for both versions:
Updated the acknowledgements.
You can now use the app in light or dark mode independently of your system settings.
Performance and reliability improvements.
As always, if Emergency Chat has helped you during a time of need, or if there’s something that you think can be improved, we’d love to hear from you! Please rate and review our app (you can do this from within the app by going to Settings > About, or if you’re reading this on Windows 10 you can use this handy direct link!).
GG, I logged on to the Microsoft MVP Award site only to immediately have digital paperwork thrust at me — to finalize my renewal for a 3rd year as a Microsoft MVP!
This comes on the same day as a new update to Emergency Chat for Windows, the last one for Windows Phone 8.1 devices. So both an exciting and poignant day, but also funny because Emergency Chat is a native C#/XAML app for WinRT/UWP, not a web app, while at the same time I’m a Front End Web Dev/Microsoft Edge MVP and not a Windows Development/Windows Phone MVP.
But I digress. I don’t have much else to say, other than that I’m really going to have to make this 3rd year count if I’m gunning for that 4th year. You see, thanks to my chaotic physical and mental health I really haven’t been as active as I would have liked.1 I haven’t even been able to get stuff done with the LEGO Room, whose reopening it will very soon be a year since, much less web stuff.
In any case, I will continue to take each day as it comes, and hopefully I’ll be back on track with some new content after the next couple of months. Hopefully enough to keep filling my MVP profile — at no point do I intend for it to lie dormant.
My two new WD My Passport drives, an orange 2 TB drive and a black 1 TB drive; as well as complimentary carrying cases in black and blue.
Today, March 31, is the annual World Backup Day. I’ve never written about it before, but my newest (and thus most current) backup drive kicked the bucket in January this year, leaving me out of a current backup solution for both my Mac and PC as well as resulting in a significant but non-critical loss of data. So I decided for the occasion that I’d use the opportunity to write about my experience with a new, upgraded backup solution, as well as measures I’ll be taking to prevent or at least mitigate another data loss like the last.
Earlier this month, my dad picked up some brand new hardware for me: not one, but twoWD My Passport USB 3.0 portable hard drives, an orange 2 TB drive and a black 1 TB drive. The smaller capacity of the latter is due to budget constraints, but the idea is that the orange one will be my primary backup drive and the black one will be used for redundancy. The black and blue carrying cases you see were gifts with purchase!
In this entry I’ll describe my newest backup strategy and how it improves on the last, as well as provide some unboxing and in-action photos of my new WD My Passport drives.
A couple of weeks ago, the CSS Working Group published the first Editor’s Draft of the CSS Nesting Module. And there was much rejoicing, for it was a long overdue addition to the CSS standard. Yes, it’s an Editor’s Draft, meaning it — and by extension everything I discuss in this article — is subject to major changes through its development, but the fact that it’s a W3C draft at all is in itself worth celebrating to many.
As I mentioned in my last entry, I’ve been in a very rough place over the last couple of weeks (actually close to a month now), but I’m happy to report that I’m doing much better this week so I finally had a bit of time to peruse the new spec. In doing so, I thought I’d try my hand at providing an overview of its features along with sharing my personal thoughts on what I see.
No stylesheet preprocessor experience required — this is written from the perspective of someone who has never, ever used one in 13 years of writing CSS (outside of answering questions on Stack Overflow, so I know at the very least a thing or two about them).
