The Samsung Focus 2 arrives on Sunday

Heads up that the Samsung Focus 2 makes its AT&T debut this weekend. With a $50 price tag, solid spec sheet, and 4G LTE network support—not to mention classy looks—I’m betting Samsung has another Windows Phone winner on its hands. The critics agree. CNET’s Jessica Dolcourt reviewed the phone this week and liked what she saw. “I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Focus 2,” she concludes. Ben “Smoked by Windows Phone” Rudolph also put this white beauty through its paces and walked away impressed. “If you’re looking for a value-priced phone that gets you top-level features, the Samsung Focus 2 is a great choice,” he wrote. See AT&T’s entire Windows Phone line up

Tip: Rocking the lock screen

Once you do pick up that new Focus 2, check out Laura Foy’s latest tip for new Windows Phone owners. This week she delves into the secrets of the lock screen. (Looking for more great tips? We’ve got ‘em—here and here.)

“Dear Windows Phone”

We get lots of emails from people who decide to give Windows Phone a try and are so wowed by the experience they feel compelled to share. (Keep ‘em coming!) As Business Insider and a few other outlets noticed, we recently published one from a longtime Apple fan that landed in Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s inbox (funny how he ignores all my mails). Read it on our website. Speaking of converts, Sydney Myers over at PhoneDog has an interesting and thoughtful post this week on what soured her love affair with Android and why she now pockets a Nokia Lumia 900 instead. “I need a tool, not a toy, “ she writes. “I need a phone I can pick up and use. Windows Phone is exactly that and it manages to be seductively attractive in the process.”

List of 99 cent Xbox LIVE bestsellers grows

Last month I wrote about price cuts for seven popular Xbox LIVE titles in the Windows Phone Marketplace, including Angry Birds and Burn the Rope. Well, since then the list of bargain titles has quietly been growing, and I wanted to makes sure you knew about all the great games you can now get on the cheap. Here they are. What are you waiting for?

And finally…It’s Metro: the musical!

Windows Phone owner and UK-based musician Matt Oglesby had this thought the other day: What could I do with my Lumia 800 and some free music apps from Marketplace?

A lot, it turns out. His composition “Metro” was made from five apps—BitSynth, Piano 7, Level 6 Guitar Chords, SoundFlake Synth, Tones—mixed together using Cubase. The only thing he added extra was some drums. (Here are the full production notes.) As a hack guitarist myself, I thought this was especially cool. Even cooler: One of the apps he used, BitSynth, was coded by Windows Phone blog contributor Andy Myers, whose office is right next to mine. (Look for Andy’s chronicle of how he made BitSynth on the blog soon.)

Participating retailers in the US include Best Buy, Dell.com, Fry’s Electronics, HPDirect.com, Microsoft Stores, and NewEgg.com. In Canada, they include Best Buy, Dell.ca, Future Shop, Staples and The Source.

Please note that participating retailers and terms and conditions may change over the course of the promotion.

In college, students will spend quite a bit of time in front of their PC working on reports in Microsoft Word or creating PowerPoint presentations for group projects. They are going to want a stylish, thin and light PC that boasts great performance, yet is also durable for staying connected and on the go – PCs like the HP ENVY 15, Samsung Series 5 ULTRA and the Dell XPS 13. I sometimes feel like a college student myself running to all my meetings and constantly taking notes in Microsoft OneNote. So I recently picked myself up a Dell XPS 13. So far, the XPS 13 has proven to be a quick and nimble PC and is barely noticeable in my messenger bag as I trot through the halls of buildings here at Microsoft.

With all the hard work students put in for their classes in college, they need some downtime, right? That’s where the Xbox 360 comes in! To blow off some steam, you can just hop on Xbox LIVE and play some Halo with friends and family far away or just down the hall. Could be a great way to blow off steam and relax after a long day full of studying and classes. And this fall, Halo 4 hits – which you can now pre-order today! And the Xbox isn’t just for gaming – students will be able to enjoy a variety of entertainment options, including streaming movies and TV shows, sports, music and more!

To take advantage of this offer or more information, check with participating retailers mentioned above. Students or their parents must provide valid student identification as defined by the participating retailer.

We’re now doing the final work needed to turn on this new requirement, so I thought it would be a good time for another friendly reminder. If you’re just tuning in, my earlier post has all the details on why we’re doing this. (In short, the new requirement is tied to a larger Marketplace improvement effort.) But the key takeaway is that if you like apps and games, you’ll soon need Windows Phone 7.5 installed to continue using Marketplace. Most of you already do.

If not, you’ll find a checklist and step-by-step instructions for installing Windows Phone 7.5 on Update Central. I’ll also be back with another reminder on the day the requirement actually kicks in.

Back in December, we added another way to share. You can get a link to any file or folder on SkyDrive and send that link to friends. You can choose to let friends edit or add files, or choose to make the link read-only. Since then, SkyDrive users have created over 13 million links—copying and pasting them into their favorite apps or services.

While this feature has been popular, we’ve also gotten a lot of feedback that our links are too long and too ugly. We agree!

Sharing with links just got a bit friendlier:

• We’ve shortened our regular URLs by 40%. Our previous URLs didn’t even fit inside a Tweet! Oh the shame!
• You can shorten them even further thanks to our new partnership with bitly and the new domain for shortened SkyDrive URLs: http://sdrv.ms
• We’ve added OpenGraph support to our URLs so that when you paste them into places like Facebook, a nice thumbnail preview gets generated

Shorter links

As you can see in the Share dialog, there is a Shorten button

Shortening using our own custom domain

Clicking the button will result in a very short URL using the SDRV.MS domain

Support for OpenGraph for link previews

If you copy that URL to Facebook you’ll see a nicer preview

Stats on your short links

Since bitly powers the shortener, you also get great power features. For example, you can add a ‘+’ to the end of any short URL to see statistics. You can also generate a QR code for that URL by appending ’.qrcode’ to that URL.

We hope you enjoy these changes, and thanks for using SkyDrive!

Omar Shahine
Group Program Manager, SkyDrive.com

Unfortunately this also comes with a price – the ListBox is now so responsive and moves so fast that the Listbox can run out of content to display to the user as the user is flicking, and blank – basically drawing nothing except for an updated ScrollBar (so the user knows he’s still moving in the ListBox, but it doesn’t help much) and the background while the UI thread scrambles to bring in new items to fill up the holes.

My ListBox isn’t blanking, why do I care about this blog post?

You care because you care about your users. You’re the kind of dev who knows that even though he’s got a great, powerful phone, not everyone does. You care because you are proud to call yourself a developer. You care because… ok, back to reality.

With the release of Tango, Windows Phone is now supported on lower powered machines which often have slower hardware and less memory, so even though your device shows no blanking, others may see blanking, especially if they’re rocking a new, lower powered, Tango phone. This post will help give you the tools that let your app run smooth, with hardly any blanks, even on those phones.

My ListBox is not blanking, but it’s really jerky during scroll

Holy Smokes Batman! Jerky scrolling is all but eliminated in the new ListBox, even for WP7 apps – are you sure you’re using it? There’s a good chance you’re using the original LongListSelector (LLS) from the toolkit, which doesn’t auto-update when you move your project to Mango. To take full advantage of the new ListBox improvements you need to download the latest toolkit from http://silverlight.codeplex.com and update to the new LLS which is based on the platform’s ListBox.

Why does blanking occur: the nitty gritty

There are a couple of common code / design reasons that cause a ListBox to blank, but in general it all boils down to the amount of time it takes to bring in a new item. The ListBox maintains a one screen buffer of items in each direction which moves with the user’s viewport as they scroll around. If the ListBox can’t fill that buffer in the direction of the scroll fast enough, you get blanking.

Diagram 1: In a stationary world, when there is no scrolling going on, the user will be looking at the center screen and there will be buffered items waiting to be shown in both directions

Filling the buffer takes a few steps, namely creating an Item Container (if a suitable one from the excess buffer in the other direction doesn’t already exist) and Data Binding the new item’s content (which kicks off the Measure pass). All of these updates occur on the UI thread and they all happen at once (not item by item) so if a flick is fast and the ListBox realizes that it needs to draw a full screen worth’s of items it will block the UI thread while it does just that.

Diagram 2: As the user moves downwards we balance the buffers by transferring the excess buffer from the top buffer (red) to the bottom buffer and re-databind it to the new data, maintaining 1 screen of buffer in each direction.

But if the user flicks again while the UI thread is blocked bringing in buffer items, we’ll get even more out of sync and move completely out of our buffer space – since there is nothing in the Control to draw (remember, the ListBox is still scrambling on the UI thread to bring the new items in, it’s just too slow) you just get the background, i.e blankness.

If there’s nothing to draw, why is the ListBox still moving? Or, look at it from another angle:

As we mentioned earlier, scrolling is now off-thread, so from the Compositor’s point of view it’s moving the ListBox and everything in it, the problem is that the UI thread hasn’t stuck anything in it (at that position) yet, so we blank.

Diagram 3: Fast flicking a few times get you into this situation, where we have excess buffer above which we are trying to move downwards, but because there is so much of it and the UI thread is blocked trying to bring these items in we don’t finish in time and the user sees blankness (black) until the items are ready, at which time they simply appear.

So why is *my* ListBox blanking? And how do I fix it?

Let’s run through a couple of common reasons why ListBoxes blank, with some proposed solutions to each one.

1. Using ValueConverters in your template

ValueConverters are great – they allow you to transform your data on the fly as they are being DataBound into your items. Unfortunately they incur a UI thread cost – we need to transition from Silverlight into User Code, run your converter and then return. If your converter is heavy or you’re using lots of them in your template, then this will introduce blanking.

Question to ask yourself: does this code look like it can run in a trivial amount of time across all of the elements being brought in for a given frame? If not, you probably should explore a different way of doing the DataBinding. For example,you can have the object translate the values on population / property get time instead of using a converter - even though this may break your Data Model this can significantly reduce the DataBinding cost (and you could always wrap your object in a ViewModel).

2. Complex DataTemplates

When an item is moved from one buffer to another during a scroll, ListBox is usually smart enough to determine that this is the same kind of item and just update the data in the item. While this might sound cheap this dirties the item causing it to be remeasured. If your template is complex you will find that a lot of your time is wasted in Measure – remeasuring the layout of the control now that the data has been updated.

Fixing this is very per-scenario. Some general guidelines are to make sure to only use a container if you really need the options it provides – do you have a Grid within a Grid? Could you replace all of your Grids with a simple Canvas or maybe a StackPanel?

3. Decoding images on the UI thread

By default all images are decoded synchronously on the UI thread, so if you have something like this:

<Image Source=”{Binding ImageUrl}”/>

you're going to block the UI thread for however long it takes to decode your image. Luckily there’s an easy fix for this, change your template to read as follows:

<Image>
  <Image.Source>
    <BitmapImage UriSource="{Binding ImgUrl}" CreateOptions="BackgroundCreation"/>
  </Image.Source>
</Image>

Note that this does come with some caveats – older images will still show up until the new ones are loaded and the user may see a visual pop-in of the image when it is done loading, but these can all be worked around and massaged into a nice user experience that is not harmed by excessive image decode.

For further details see this blog post.

4. Using PrepareItemForContainerOverride to dynamically select a template

A simple list item is often times just not good enough – your app has an image item, a text item, a video item, a link item etc. etc. and you have a different template for each one of them. A common pattern is to use the ListBox’s PrepareItemForContainerOverride callback to dynamically change the container’s template based on what item is being databound.

Unfortunately, doing this can completely throw off the ListBox’s buffering technique – the ListBox sees that the container that it had in its buffer is not the type that you need and junks it, wasting even more time on the march to blankness.

So how do I solve this? Surprisingly enough, it is often cheaper to have all of your template parts in one large template (yes, yes, I know about point 2 above – keep reading!) with each mini-template collapsed if it does not apply. Since collapsed template items incur next to no cost during layout, they have next to no impact on run time (though there is a slightly larger memory cost).

And how do I get my different items to display on the different templates? Simple – databind to a new property on your classes which either has a type enumeration that runs through a value converter (ItemTypeToVisibility), these kinds of converters are often cheap, or wrap your class in a UI view model so that it has a property that returns the Visibility type directly.

5. Pulling data from [favorite heavy source] as part of your binding

The properties you bind to should have simple getters (setters is a different story) – always. If you have logic like this:

public int Rating
{
  get
  {
    <read from database>   
    - or -
    <read from IsoStore>
    - or -
    <parse out some XML>
    - etc -   
  }
}

then you’re doing something wrong. This kind of logic is fine for a property that you know is only read very rarely, if at all, but if it’s in a ListBox then it most likely is going to be seen and you should be initializing the data up front.

Don’t get me wrong – you don’t need to load everything as you are pulling in 1000 items to your list, but you can certainly do it on a background thread as a deferred task kicked off in the constructor of your object. If your objects are really heavy and memory is becoming an issue then you have a few possible routes:

• Implement a completely delayed load by hooking into the ListBox’s scroll amount or compression states and only loading more items when you get to the end of the list
  
• Implement a DoubleLinkedObservableCollection, where each item in the collection knows about the next node (in each direction) and when it gets databound (based on one of the properties) it notifies X number of nodes on each side to make sure they all have their data ready to go. This should be done on a background thread, just don’t forget to Dispatch back to update any properties that raise a PropertyChanged event.

6. Cut down background work

With only one core any background thread can interfere with the smoothness of the UI thread. Although background threads get a much smaller time slice compared to the UI thread, enough of them vying for time will effectively starve the UI thread.

Diagram 4: Fictional time slice showing the effects of more background threads (not to scale)

Across any given slice of time, the UI thread will be allowed to run longer than any other thread, but is effectively running at the same priority, hence it is forced to yield to the background threads when its time is up. The more background threads, the longer it is before you get back to the UI thread so that it can complete its task.

Moral of the story? Be wise about the number of active background, especially in high stress scenarios. Stick to using a thread pool so that you can queue up your work without it all trying to run at the same time.

I’ve tried all the above, it’s still blanking and I only have a couple of screens of data – help!

If you find yourself blanking on a relative small set of data (approximately 3-5 screens), then it might be time for drastic measures. As mentioned above the cause for blanking is the amount of time it takes to bring in new items with new data as the user is scrolling, i.e. the virtualization overhead is the culprit. If you disable virtualization on your list, you’ll generate of all your items up front and scrolling will be blankless. To do this, add the following to your XAML:

<ListBox.ItemsPanel>
  <ItemsPanelTemplate>
    <StackPanel>
    </StackPanel>
  </ItemsPanelTemplate>
</ListBox.ItemsPanel>

While making this change is relatively simple, the impact can be drastic – no more blanking, but it comes at a cost:

1. Startup time for the Page increases – we now have to realize more items, so it’s going to take longer
   
2. Memory – same as above, more items hanging around, larger memory cost

If you give it a try on a low end device and startup and memory look acceptable – then this is your magic bullet!

So what are we left with?

Hopefully at this point you have a non to minimally blanking list, which scrolls smoothly and generally delights your users! Have you run into any other pitfalls that you think others should be warned of? Let us know below!

Running into other, unrelated performance issues? Drop us a line and we'll see if we can focus on them in a future blog post (stay tuned for a "memory" series coming soon).

Fong, 43, joined the Windows Phone design team three years ago and has been one of the leading thinkers behind Windows Phone’s signature look and the set of underlying design principles known as “Metro."

Trained as an illustrator at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., Fong says he always had an interest in combining traditional media with technology. In 1993 he won an internship at Microsoft and was assigned to work on two of the company’s early multimedia efforts aimed at kids—Creative Writer and Fine Artist. He hasn’t looked back since. 

Over the years Fong has worked on everything from an interactive gardening guide to Windows Media Center and the Zune music player, two other Microsoft products often praised for their fresh and distinctive designs. After the company made the decision to reboot its smartphone effort, Fong was tapped to help lead a team to define the look and feel of what would become Windows Phone, turning to airport and subway signage as one source of inspiration.

I caught up with Fong last week for a quick Q&A on Windows Phone and design.

###

The design of Windows Phone—and its influence on other high-profile Microsoft products like Windows 8—has been getting a lot of attention lately, including stories in Bloomberg Businessweek and the New York Times. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak also recently gushed about his “beautiful” new Windows Phone. Some folks seem genuinely surprised that Microsoft could design something like this. Are you?

A lot of people come with preconceived notions about Microsoft. There’s always been good design here. But I think the stuff that we’ve done previously has been mostly expected. The thing we did with Windows Phone is we came out with a design that is unexpected. It’s not like anything else you see out there. That change in direction is the thing that’s bringing the attention I think.

What is the “Metro” design philosophy? Can you boil it down into a sentence or two?

Without going deep into the principles, we wanted to find a way to present content in the most clear, direct, and honest way possible. Really that’s the heart of it.

It’s certainly a big break from the look and design of other smartphones I see out there.

There’s a tendency to make things look kind of pretty.  And the way you make things look pretty is by adding decorative elements like drop shadows, reflections, glassy surfaces, and things like that. To me, it’s a distraction. One of my favorite examples is when you go to a museum, a lot of times the frame of the painting actually feels more important than the painting itself. It’s the same idea here: When you start adding other things on top of the content, it’s actually taking your attention away from it. Stripping away complexity is really relevant today in our very busy lives. I want information to be presented in a way that’s really easy for you to consume.

You spent a bunch of time working on Windows Media Center, a popular Windows desktop feature designed for connecting PCs to TVs. Was it difficult going from a big screen to a small one?

The thing I like about what we’re doing now is having touch surfaces for direct interaction, versus TV and a remote control. There’s a lot more nuance in that interaction, and we spend a lot of time thinking about the gestures and how the UI [user interface] responds. There’s something kind of magical when you touch something and it just responds.

Speaking of responding, people often mention how much they like the subtle animations found throughout Windows Phone. Are those just for decoration?

It’s storytelling. We’re taking you on a journey from Start. Motion brings a sense of depth and life and makes you feel like the phone is responding to you.  We also use motion to enhance your perception of speed. For example, we often start with an initial fast motion and then we slow it down, so what you notice more, mentally, is that initial burst of speed. It makes our software feel really responsive to our customers, and I think that’s delightful.

I saw a report last week arguing smartphones may be the fastest spreading technology in history. How will the Windows Phone I carry in my pocket 10 years from now be different?

I don’t know, and I think that’s what makes it so fun. [laughs] But I think the biggest shift that’s happened over the last few years is how connected everything is and I don’t think we’ve pushed the limits of that connectedness, whether it’s technology-to-technology or person-to-person. I think there’s a lot of really interesting opportunities to explore.

Where do you draw inspiration from when you get stuck on a design problem?

Right now the thing that really fascinates me is architecture.  I see a lot of parallels between what we do and how an architect thinks about a space. And the other thing that’s really an inspiration is the great designers we have in this studio. We have just awesome designers here. When all else fails, we have a brainstorming session. There’s nothing like just talking to other really smart, amazing people to get past a mental block. 

What will you be doing in 10 years?

The great things about Microsoft is there’s always some new technology to work on. Since I’ve been here, I went from floppy disks to CD-ROMs to the web to TV to devices to phones. There’s no way 10 years ago I would’ve been able to say I’m going to be working on smartphones. To me the fun part is just combining technology with design to bring really amazing consumer experiences.

The Training Center hosts a series of online physical and cognitive assessments that will test your ability to be a functioning member of the Project Prometheus team, including testing emotional and intelligence quotients, spatial relations, agility, and even your ability to withstand 46 G’s. The top performers will be featured, and every day we will highlight one “Elite Applicant” that has top performing test results across all five assessments. We know there are Prometheus fans that can’t wait for the summer blockbuster release (those of us on the IE team included!), and we think the Training Center provides fans a fun way to jump into the world of Weyland Industries and Project Prometheus.

The HTML5 experience leans heavily upon jQuery for the UI and controls, and the team even created a special 3D library for the Spatial Relations and Prefrontal Cortex Assessments to import features such as 3D models, lighting, hit testing and camera rotation. The code library will be available for download on our Internet Explorer channel on GitHub in the coming weeks.

“By partnering with the Internet Explorer team, we were able to create an online experience that makes visitors part of the Prometheus experience. The HTML5 and hardware accelerated capabilities of Internet Explorer 9 gave us the power we needed to provide amazingly realistic mental and physical challenges that bring the Training Center to life,” said Ira Rubenstein, EVP Digital at Twentieth Century Fox.

Since the introduction of Internet Explorer 9, one of our big focuses on the IE team has been to create rich and compelling online experiences showcasing the power of HTML5. From our launch of the popular game Cut the Rope, to creating interactive music videos, and highlighting futuristic graphic novels with Brandon Generator, we’re continuously looking to drive the web forward and push the envelope with regards to what can be developed in HTML5. Working with Fox on the Project Prometheus Training Center gave us the opportunity to build our interactive HTML5 content on top of the rich narrative from the Prometheus movie.

We built the Project Prometheus assessments so you can use any futuristic browser you like – though “Weyland Industries recommends” using the latest version of Internet Explorer. When using Internet Explorer 9, you will have the opportunity to participate in preferred candidate assessments reserved exclusively for IE users.  These preferred assessments will boost your overall score, giving you a competitive edge to place in the top scoring percentile of those who are accepted to Project Prometheus.

Do you have what it takes to keep your head at 46 G’s? Good luck!

Ryan Gavin, General Manager, Internet Explorer

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon weighs less than three pounds and beats Ultrabook specifications. Lenovo understands that it can be a hassle to wait for your laptop battery to charge, so they armed this Ultrabook with Lenovo RapidCharge which charges up to 80% battery in just 30 minutes. With built in 3G you have the ability to access the web from practically anywhere without being tethered to your Wi-Fi network. This laptop is a great choice for business pros who are out and about or travel frequently because it won’t break your back when being toted around in your bag and you have 24/7 access to the internet, email, and corporate networks.

The ThinkPad Classic L, X, T, and W have all been privy to some solid upgrades that are representative of the quality and care that are trademark Lenovo. Purchase one of these laptops and you will reap the benefits of your choice of the latest 3rd Generation Intel Core Processor and Lenovo Enhanced Experience 3.0 with RapidBoot technology on selected models. This innovative work from Lenovo will boot your laptop up to 40 percent faster than a typical Windows 7 computer. If web conferencing is a large component of your 9-5, then make sure you check out the advanced video and calling features.

Pictured below: Lenovo ThinkPad X230

If you are looking to take one of these laptops to the next level make sure you investigate adding a Solid State Drive (SSD). All of these ThinkPad models have the option to include a 250GB self-encrypting SSD. This is a great storage solution if you want extra protection for sensitive files and increased performance and reliability than the alternative Hard Disk Drive.

Lenovo will start to roll out these laptops for purchase in June. Lenovo was gracious enough to send me the gorgeous light and small ThinkPad X230 to take for a test drive, so stay tuned because I will be sharing my impressions in a future blog post. This will be my first hands on experience with a Lenovo (many of my coworkers have them), so I am anxious to be able to join club of Lenovo enthusiasts.

Enter AboutOne, a family organizer that offers way to corral the chaos. Download it now 

The free app—currently exclusive to Windows Phone—is designed to be a one-stop family organizer and a companion to AboutOne’s web service. The app makes it easy to store notes, kids artwork, store receipts, health stats, emergency info, and all kinds of other domestic paperwork and data so it’s organized and available whenever you need it. Another nice touch: the app is password-protected in case you ever lose your phone.

I’m only scratching the surface of all the features and scenarios where AboutOne comes in handy. The AboutOne blog has more of the scoop.

Lenovo will be talking about a variety of their great product offerings today during the chat. Whether it’s their tough ThinkPad X1 or their new U310 IdeaPad, they offer a range of great PCs that suit the needs of a variety of discerning customers. If you really want thin and light PCs, then you are in luck.

During today’s chat, we’ll be giving away the Lenovo IdeaPad U310 weighing in at under 2 lbs., super slim and with up to 8 hours of battery life – it’s a great PC for someone looking for style and functionality.

To participate in the Tech Tuesday Live Twitter Chat:

1. Join us from 12-1 PT (3-4 ET) on Twitter
2. Follow the hashtag #winchat
3. Follow @windows, @kristinalibby, @brandonleblanc, @daniellaycock, and @windowsblog to make sure you get the whole picture.
4. Answer Q1-Q5 to be eligible for the grand prize. Full legal terms and conditions here.

Note we will only be talking about the outlined topic each week and we will not be answering questions outside those topics. Questions for this week may include: How much does the Lenovo U310 weigh? Where can I purchase this PC model? How much memory does it have?