Customizing the “selected” HubSection Header 21. September 2015 Shawn Windows Phone (0) I saw a question today about changing the foreground color of the “visible” or “selected” HubSection. Someone had pointed out that I have a behavior for getting the selected index of a Hub and it could be combined with a converter to give the desired output. I thought the solution to this problem was actually quiet simpler. If we can change the visual state of the hub sections when they change, we can give them a “selected” or “unselected” state. For this we can listen to the SectionsIsViewChanged event public class CustomHub : Hub{ HubSection _lastSelectedSection = null; public CustomHub() { SectionsInViewChanged += OnSectionsInViewChanged; } private void OnSectionsInViewChanged(object sender, SectionsInViewChangedEventArgs sectionsInViewChangedEventArgs) { if (_lastSelectedSection == SectionsInView[0]) return; VisualStateManager.GoToState(SectionsInView[0], "Selected", true); if (_lastSelectedSection != null) {... [More]
Using the new Ad Mediator control for Windows Phone 8. November 2014 Shawn Windows Phone (0) Microsoft announced today a new SDK to help monetize your Windows Phone apps. This SDK, called Ad Mediator allows you to integrate multiple ad providers into your app. We all know that PubCenter has not been performing well, even Microsoft. So, the tools team built this SDK to help developers easily earn money through ads. This is not a new concept. Windows Phone has had the AdRotator control for some time. Advantages of using Ad Medator The Ad Mediator will cycle between any of the ad providers that you configure. You are not guaranteed to get 100% fill rate. You are not guaranteed to get high eCPM. But you are guaranteed that if one provider does not have an ad, another provider will be used. Installing and using the SDK I’m not going to go over this topic except to say to follow the documentation online. Precautions I found that there are some things you need to be careful of. You must download and install the ad provider SDKs before configuring Ad Mediator. You do not need to dow... [More]
Restore the last visible Hub Section with the DefaultSectionIndex 22. August 2014 Shawn Windows Phone (0) Use the DefaultSectionIndex to open the Hub to the appropriate page. [More]
Bind a collection of items to the Windows Phone MapControl 13. August 2014 Shawn Windows Phone (0) With every major version of Windows Phone comes a new way to work with maps. Keeping up with all of these changes has, honestly, been a hassle. Windows Phone 8.1 continues this trend with the new MapControl. It does improve from Windows Phone 8 in a lot of ways. One of those areas is that you no longer need another toolkit to perform basic map functionality. In Windows Phone 8 you needed the Windows Phone Toolkit to do things like add map elements to the map. Now this functionality is part of the core functionality. To bind a collection of items to the new MapControl you use the MapItemsControl within the MapControl itself. <maps:MapControl x:Name="Map" MapServiceToken="abcdef-abcdefghijklmno"> <maps:MapItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Locations}"> </maps:MapItemsControl> </maps:MapControl> The MapItemsControl is just a DependencyObject that has the ability to set items, thr... [More]
Implementing truly timed Windows Phone app trials with Azure Mobile Services 23. July 2014 Shawn Windows Phone (0) An awesome part of Windows Phone and Windows Store apps is the ability to offer a trial version to users before they decide to purchase the app. This gives uses an opportunity to try the app for free before paying. There are different ways to offer trials. You can limit functionality while in trial mode. You can offer unlimited trials, allowing the user to use the app forever, or you can allow the user to use the app for limited time period. For Windows Store apps, you can specify in the Store how long the user is allowed to try the app. Windows Phone apps do not offer this capability. When implementing timed trials in apps, a common task for app developers is to store a value within the app for when the app was first opened. Note: As this is relevant for both Silverlight and Runtime apps, this blog will contain code for both. The code samples will switch back and forth. public static bool IsTrialExpired() { // Silverlight example va... [More]
Disabling tilt on a ListView or GridView 9. July 2014 Shawn Windows Phone (0) I have mentioned before that the tilt animation is enabled by default in Windows Phone 8.1 Runtime apps, but what happens when you want to display a collection of items but do not want to enable tilt? You may not want to enable tilt because there is no extra action that happens when you tap an item. As with most things, there are a few options here. The first is to not use a ListView/GridView at all. Instead just use an ItemsControl to display your items. This is great provided you do not have a lot of items you need to show. ItemsControl is not virtualized like the ListView/GridView so it uses a lot of memory when displaying a lot of items. This is my go to control for displaying a small collection of items that have no action associated with them. If you still want to use the ListView or GridView control then there is a simple way to disable the animation. You will need to modify the style of the ListViewItem or GridViewItem. For this post I will demonstrate using the ListViewItem,... [More]
Tilt animation for Windows Phone Runtime 8. July 2014 Shawn Windows Phone (0) In a previous post I talked about some of the awesome animations and transitions available in Window Phone 8.1 Runtime apps. These animations and transitions were previously only available with a second SDK like the Windows Phone Toolkit or Telerik’s phone controls. One of the most used animations from both toolkit was the tilt animation. This animation shows a user that what they are touching can be tapped and will probably do something when they do tap. I also previously blogged about how you can enable the tilt animation for “unselectable” items. I am happy to say that the tilt animation is now built into all “tappable” controls without having to do anything! So you would think that would be the end of the post right? I just said “it just works”. This is true for things like ListView/GridView/Buton, but what about when you want to display a StackPanel with a few items in it and those items should be tiltable? Some work is needed to get this working and there are a few ways to accom... [More]
Creating a feathered (aka staggered) page transition 25. June 2014 Shawn Windows Phone (0) One of the most known page transitions on Windows Phone is the feather (or staggered item) transition. This is the transition you see when opening the mail app and the messages feather, or stagger in. This animation is also seen on the home page on the phone when the tiles stagger in. You usually see this transition whenever there is a list of items shown by any of the built in apps. This transition was previously only available through toolkits like the Windows Phone Toolkit or Telerik’s toolkit. Now this transition is available out of the box for Windows Phone Runtime apps. For background on page transitions in Windows Phone 8.1 Runtime apps, see my previous post. To get started, simply create a new Windows Phone Runtime app. Page transitions are enabled by default for all Runtime apps! To use this transition, you’ll want to set the page transition to use the NavigationThemeTransition with the CommonNavigationTransitionInfo. Make sure to set IsStaggeringEnabled to true for the Com... [More]
Page transitions and animations in Windows Phone Runtime apps 24. June 2014 Shawn Windows Phone (0) This is part of a series on migrating from the WP Toolkit. With the release of Windows Phone 8.1 Runtime (aka XAML apps) comes a lot of functionality that previously only existed in the Windows Phone Toolkit or other third party control suites. One of these are page transitions and animations on objects. In Windows Phone 8 apps your best option for page transitions was the Windows Phone Toolkit or Telerik. I’ve used both, but really enjoy the robustness and ease of use of Teleriks transitions. With Teleriks RadTransitionControl you could setup forward and backward animations with three lines of XAML! Contrast that with the Windows Phone Toolkit where it takes 20 lines of XAML!! Because I like Teleriks transitions this post will cover moving from the Windows Phone Toolkit or the Teleriks transitions to the new transitions in the Windows Phone Runtime. In both the Windows Phone Toolkit and Telerik you had to set the RootFrame of the App to be the control suite transition frame. ... [More]
Migrating from the Windows Phone Toolkit ContextMenu to the new Runtime MenuFlyout 29. May 2014 Shawn Windows Phone (0) Create a MenuFlyoutService (ContextMenuService) to show a ContextMenu in Windows Phone 8.1 using the MenuFlyout [More]