Monthly Archives: June 2014

Spyder Client for Windows 8.1 – Live Control

One of my favorite areas working on in the Spyder Client for Windows 8.1 was the live view, which not only shows a real-time visualization of the Spyder server’s PixelSpaces, but allows for live interaction and command key creation. While it’s not necessarily new, I thought it would be fun to create a Camtasia video showcasing the live control available from the Spyder Client.  I certainly enjoyed making it, and I hope you enjoy watching it (and using it).

Under the Hood – Leveraging Spyder’s External Control

Internally, the Spyder Client uses the Spyder server’s publicly accessible external control protocol for all control actions performed by the application.  This is for a few reasons, one of the more notable of which is that Windows Store applications do not support .Net Remoting (which is how the Vista Advanced client communicates to Spyder).   If your curious how the Spyder Client is doing something you can simply check out the Spyder server’s logs to see what commands are being executed (see screenshot below).  Just make sure to set the server tracing level to information or success so that the command logs actually appear.  Of course, if you have a specific question, feel free to leave a comment under this blog post.  I’m always happy to help out a fellow coder.

Viewing remote server logs in Vista Advanced

Viewing remote server logs in Vista Advanced

Just in case you don’t already know, the external control protocol documentation is included with the installation of the Vista Advanced client software. If you have Advanced installed, then the external control protocol PDF document is already available from your start menu.