WP8Tips

Showing posts with label WP8Tips. Show all posts

Who don’t want to put a link in the apps/games to provide feedback directly to the developer via email? To do this in Windows Phone Silverlight applications was pretty easy. We just had to create the instance of the EmailComposeTask and call the Show() method.

 

But this has been changed a bit in Windows Phone 8.1 RT applications. In this post, we are going to discuss this along with comparison to what has been changed.

Published by on under Windows Phone | Windows Phone 8.1

You might already know that, Windows Phone 8.1 SDK came with few API changes targeting the Windows Runtime. If you are a developer and looking to launch the phone dialler from your app, this post will help you to know the changes.

 

In this post we are going to discuss “How to programmatically do a Phone Call in Windows Phone 8.1” with a comparison between the API changes.

Published by on under Windows Phone | Windows Phone 8.1

Windows Phone 8.1 SDK came with slight changes in it’s API and among them, few changes I already blogged earlier with a comparison to the previous SDK version. If you are looking for Screen Orientation changes, this post will help you.

 

In this post we are going to discuss “How to set the Supported Orientation and Screen Orientation in Windows Phone 8.1” with a comparison between the API changes.

Published by on under CodeProject | DZone

You might be already searching for it and landed to this post. If you started working on Windows Phone application/game development, you might want to add an option to rate your app/game in the store. The API has been changed a bit in WP8.1.

 

In this post we are going to discuss “How to launch the Rating & Review screen in Windows Phone 8.1” with a comparison between the API changes.

Published by on under Windows Phone | Windows Phone 8.1

In the last post “Windows Phone 8.1 Text-To-Speech - What’s changed for #WPDev?”, we discussed about the Text-To-Speech API changes in Windows Phone 8.1 in comparison to Windows Phone 8.0 APIs. We also covered the capability changes in WP8.1.

 

Today in this blog post we will learn about the API changes to retrieve all voices installed in the device as well as the way to set a specific voice. Continue to read further.

Published by on under Windows Phone | Windows Phone 8.1

If you are a WPDev, you might want to integrate the Text-To-Speech engine of WP8.x SDK in your application/game. Though it is not a new feature, but the API has been changed in Windows Phone 8.1 SDK which you might want to know before integrating.

 

In this blog post, I am going to share the API changes in Windows Phone 8.1 and do the comparison with WP8.0 APIs. Continue reading to know more about this.

Published by on under Windows Phone | Windows Phone 8.1

If you have already started working on Windows Phone 8.1 app/game, you might have observed that, unlike to the older versions of Windows Phone, every XAML page starts with a Page tag instead of PhoneApplicationPage and thus, you are not able to show/hide the StatusBar control in that page.

 

So, what’s needs to be done in order to show or hide the Status Bar of Windows Phone 8.1 based on the requirement of your app? In this small post, we will discuss about it.

Published by on under Windows Phone | Windows Phone 8.1

Sometime for some security reason, developer might want to restrict his/her Windows Phone application to be deployed in SD cards. There might be different reasons too. So, how can you prevent your user to deploy the app in the SD card of their device?

 

Let’s discuss the No-Code way to prevent this deployment. Remember that, it is only applicable for Windows Phone 8.0 or higher apps.

Published by on under Windows Phone | WP8

After the last post on “What’s new in Windows Phone 8.1 - First look to Start Screen, Theme”, I wanted to share another new feature that’s coming as part of Windows Phone 8.1 within few days. If you are a developer, you might have already experiences the new phone OS.

 

Okay, let’s come to the point. This time I will be talking about Internet Explorer In-Private browsing, part of IE11 in Windows Phone, which will help you to securely browse internet.

Published by on under Windows Phone | Windows Phone 8.1

Microsoft already released Windows Phone 8.1 as part of Developer Preview programme, that means, developers having Windows Phone store account and/or App Studio account can try this before it comes out for general public to experience.

 

Windows Phone 8.1 has some cool new and enhanced features set and among them Start Screen and Themes are there. In this post, we are going to discuss on this today.

Published by on under Windows Phone | Windows Phone 8.1

It happens sometime that a specific theme like Light or Dark looks good in some application. In such case, you have to specify all the colours manually to background foreground etc. This is very hectic job. Is there any easy way doing this?

 

Yes, we have. Jeff Wilcox simplified this process by releasing a ThemeManager library (open source) for you which you can use in your app and force a specific theme for your Windows Phone application.

Published by on under Windows Phone | WP7

As a WPDev, you might want to provide your users an option to change the Lock Screen of their Windows Phone 8 device. It can be from a locally stored images within the app XAP, a RSS feed, Camera Roll and/or periodically from a push notification.

 

In this blog post, we will learn how to integrate the functionality in your app to simply load and set the lock screen background from a set of images available within the app xap.

Published by on under Windows Phone | WP8

How many of you want to check the available free space in your Windows Phone device? It is very simple to get the details from the settings page. But think about a case where you want to check the free space from your app and want to chose some logic to notify the user.

 

In this small but useful post, we will discuss about the API and will share a small piece of code, which will allow you to know the available free space in user’s phone device.

Published by on under Windows Phone | WP7DEV

Sometime we need to provide an encryption mechanism to protect user data in phone and/or sharing the data over internet to a database. Data security should be always maintain by a developer to protect the content of the application that the user enters.

 

If you are building an app and looking for some way to implement the mechanism, here is a wrapper class for you to do encryption and decryption of a string literal easily.

Published by on under Security | Silverlight

If you are part of DVLUP program of Nokia, you might have noticed that, all Windows Phone 8 challenges have the same requirement “Employ Fast App Switching”. This is more likely same as “Fast App Resume”. So, what is this and how can you configure your app to support fast app resume?

 

In this small post for WPDev, we will discuss a bit about it and the simple process to configure your WP8 apps and/or games to process “Fast App Resume”.

Published by on under WP8 | WP8Dev

If you are building Location Aware app for Windows Phone 8, you might want to check whether the Location Service is enabled/disabled in the system and based on that, you can take appropriate steps asking user to enable that.

 

If you are one of such developer, this small but handy blog post will help you to figure out the status of the Location Service. Continue reading to know further about it.

Published by on under DZone | Tips

Windows Phone 8 GDR 3 is already there for the developers to try out the new features that are coming in this update 3. Among them, one is orientation lock. If you already installed WP8 GDR3, you might have already seen the Rotation Settings page.

 

If you are a WPDev, you might want to add an option in your app to launch this settings page. In this post, we are going to discuss how to do this programmatically.

Published by on under Tips | WP8

You might have used maps in your Windows Phone applications to help the user navigate from one place to another place. Windows Phone 8 supports downloading of maps for a specific place and/or country. If you want your user to easily navigate to download maps page, this post will help you.

 

Windows Phone 8 SDK exposes MapDownloaderTask, which will help you for this easy navigation. Continue reading for more information on this.

Published by on under WP8 | WP8Dev

Windows Phone 8 Update 3 (aka. GDR 3) preview already released for developers to build and test their applications and games. There are few features in this release that you might want to add in your app. For this, you need to check whether the device already has GDR3 installed.

 

In this small post, we are going to discuss how you can check whether the Updated 3 (GDR 3) has already been installed in the user’s device.

Published by on under Tips | WP8

As a WPDev, you already know about the NavigationService class that we use regularly to navigate from one page to another. But what if you want to navigate to a web URL? If you use the same class for web navigation, you will face a ArgumentException unhandled in your App class.

 

If you are one of the victim and came to this page by searching online for the solution, this post will help you today to resolve the exception in your code.

Published by on under WP8 | WP8Dev