In recent weeks there have been a few people who have raised concerns over certain content within the Marketplace, including certain spam applications and the misuse of keywords for non-relevant apps. Todd Brix from Microsoft has written this quick post on some of the changes the Windows Phone Marketplace team will be implementing in the …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.saintchubs.com/windows-phone-marketplace-content-guidelines.html
When you are binding data there are additional properties that allow you to format the display and to handle errors and null values. These are a valuable addition to any data bound control to ensure your user has a great experience. The StringFormat property allows you to add any standard .NET format string that matches …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.saintchubs.com/extra-properties-when-data-binding.html
Before the Mango update, Windows Phone developers were advised against using the application bar with a Panorama control. This was somewhat changed with the Mango which includes a new minimized mode for the application bar. This mode can be accessed using the Mode-property of the application bar. For example the built-in People hub uses this …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.saintchubs.com/panorama-backgrounds-and-minimised-appbars.html
The Microsoft Advertising SDK was only available in the US for the initial Windows Phone launch. With the release of Mango however, 11 additional countries were added including the UK. What does this mean? It means it’s really simple to integrate advertising into your Windows Phone application (or game, Silverlight or XNA). Microsoft Advertising Network …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.saintchubs.com/ms-advertising-sdk-for-wp7-in-the-uk.html
A couple of days ago I was building a ListBox for a wp7 app which required the ListBoxItems to use the full width of the container. I tried to apply some of my WPF knowledge to fix the problem, using HorizontalAlignment=”Stretch” but to no avail. It took me ages to find a work around & …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.saintchubs.com/using-full-container-width-for-listboxitem.html
I’ve already tweeted this a few days ago, but thought it needed a special mention. The other day The Verge picked up on the video from @KeyboardP. At the time the video was only posted as a proof of concept, but I have to say, that it’s awesome. Following the initial response from the video, …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.saintchubs.com/music-voice-command-using-wp7.html
At a talk at by Will Coleman at one of the WPUG meetings a couple of months back, it was suggested that some Companies felt that the Metro design ethos was incompatible with brand association. This article discuss’s the do’s and don’t to incorporating your brand into a Windows Phone 7 application. Full Article: Austin Andrews …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.saintchubs.com/branding-a-windows-phone-application.html
So here is a welcome discovery. After implementing the PerformanceProgressBar in my first NoDO app, I really thought that there needed to be a simpler way to implement a progress indicator…and now it’s here. Ducas Francis has written up a quick piece on how to use the new built in progress bar that can be …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.saintchubs.com/using-the-system-tray-to-show-progress-bar-in-wp7-mango.html
With the new Mango toolkit now fully released, there’s no excuse for poor performance. When building any new mango app using the new Performance Analysis is a must. This helps identify any threads in your app which are severely impact the runtime performance. This article by Matt Lacey, explains how he identified a problem with …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.saintchubs.com/how-to-stop-toolkit-transitions-affecting-performance.html
Recently a new version of the Windows Phone Toolkit was released: Windows Phone Toolkit – August 2011 (7.1 SDK). This 3-part article covers all the key concepts of the new HubTile control. Full Article: WindowsPhoneGeek
Permanent link to this article: http://www.saintchubs.com/windows-phone-hubtile-in-depth.html