Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Enabling Frame Rate Counters for XAML Applications in Windows 8

by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 9/21/2011 12:08:11 PM

Introduction

One of the things that we all look at before we ship software is the performance of our apps. Last November, I posted a quick and easy way to do it in Silverlight. Today, I am going to walk you through doing it in Windows 8 for your Metro XAML applications.

After the Build event was over, I was interested in learning how to do this for my Windows 8 Metro Apps. I started watching videos from the Build RSS Feed and noticed this one from Tim Heuer that did just that.

Let’s get started

Click/Touch the “Developer Command Prompt” to begin. 

That will open a Developer Command Prompt. At the command prompt, simply type in “regedit” without quotes as shown below.

Add the Registry Key

Now, depending on the version of Windows 8 you have installed navigate and add the following key.

32-bit version of Windows 8

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Xaml]

"EnableFrameRateCounter"=dword:00000001

64-bit

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Xaml]

"EnableFrameRateCounter"=dword:00000001

In my case, I was using Windows 8 64-bit. I had to create a new key called XAML and added a DWORD (32-bit) named EnableFrameRateCounter with a value of 1

Let’s test it

All you have to do now is to run any XAML / C# Metro Application.

Ok, so what do these numbers mean? Again, thanks to Tim Heuer for the nice slide.

You will notice that any application built using XAML / C# will display this framerate counter. Even the ones that ships with Windows 8. (For example: The Memories application)

What about HTML / JS apps?

It will not work with HTML / JS Metro Applications as I tried it. I think that is why the registry key starts with “XAML”. =)

Thanks for reading!

Michael Crump is a Silverlight MVP and MCPD that works for Telerik as a XAML Evangelist. He has been involved with computers in one way or another for as long as he can remember, but started professionally in 2002. After spending years working as a systems administrator/tech support analyst, Michael branched out and started developing internal utilities that automated repetitive tasks and freed up full-time employees. From there, he was offered a job working at McKesson corporation and has been working with some form of .NET and VB/C# since 2003. You can follow Michael on Twitter or keep up with his blog by subscribing to his RSS Feed.