Settings: All the Things Every Starter Kit App Should Configure

The Syndicated Client Experiences (SCE) Starter Kit allows developers to quickly create highly differentiated and customized WPF applications. Some aspects of this customization are readily apparent: viewer chrome, section front styles, and page layout, for example. Other aspects of this customization such as file extensions and the executable name may go unnoticed. This document provides a list of things you should change before you deploy your app.

Settings.settings

The starter kit sample application uses Visual Studio’s settings designer to allow developers to easily configure the most common application settings. These settings are accessed within Visual Studio by expanding the SceReaderSample project in the Solution Explorer, double clicking on "Properties", and selecting the "Settings" tab.

ApplicationName – a string representing the application name. This setting will affect the location of the application data directory.

ChannelPortName – a string representing a unique name for the channel the app uses to connect to the SubscriptionCenter. The application author bears the burden of guaranteeing uniqueness. In general, a name that somehow combines the application name and publisher name is sufficient.

CompanyName – a string representing the name of the company publishing the application. This setting will influence the location of the application data directory.

DataFeedUri – a string that points to the location of the master feed.

DataUpdateFrequency – the System.TimeSpan frequency at which the application checks for feed updates.

SavedDataExtension – the file extension used to save stories to disk. This file extension is also used when e-mailing stories from the application. When creating an installer package, ensure that this file type is associated with the application.

UseDesignFeedInDebug – when set to true, the sample application uses a local feed when running in debug mode. Once you have created your own data feed and have changed the DataFeedUri property accordingly, set this setting to false.

Application splash screen

The sample application uses an unmanaged splash screen to give users immediate feedback when they launch the application. To use your own splash screen:

1. Replace the included splash screen – copy your splash screen to the Win32Resources folder of the sample application. Delete the existing "splashscreen.png" and the rename your image to "splashscreen.png".
2. Recompile the resources file
   1. Open a Visual Studio command prompt
   2. Navigate the command prompt to the Win32Resources folder of the sample application
   3. Run the following command (make sure that SplashScreenWin32Resources.RES is not write protected):
      rc /d "UNICODE" SplashScreenWin32Resources.rc
3. Clean your solution
4. Build and run your application by pressing F5.

Email Converters

When emailing a story, the application creates a new message using the default mail client and attaches a file representing the story and all of its annotations. In addition, the message body is populated using some simple mail templates. These templates are found in the Resources\MailTemplates folder of the sample application. You should customize the following files:

1. HtmlMailSummaryTemplate.txt
2. HTMLMailTemplate.txt
3. SimpleMailTemplate.txt

The format of these files a straightforward and easily discernible from included samples. To help potential users who receive an article via e-mail that don’t have the application installed, include a link to install the application within each of the templates.

Executable Name

Application authors should change the executable name so that users are not confused when they see the process running in the task manager. To change the name:

1. In Visual Studio, use the Solution Explorer to double click on SceReaderSample’s “Properties”
2. Select the "Application" tab.
3. In the “Assembly name” field, type the desired name.

Main Window Title

This is the text that appears in the Window chrome.

To change:

1. Open Pages/MainPage.xaml in the sample application
2. Edit the WindowTitle property of the Page element

Setup

There are a number of fields in the installer which must reflect your company's and application's name. Please see the document: Building a ClickOnceMSI Hybrid Setup package for specific details.