windows phone 7

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Windows Phone 7 : The Silverlight Controls (part 9) - Layout Controls - ScrollViewer Controls

The ScrollViewer contains a StackPanel whose Width and Height have both been set to Auto so that they automatically expand to match the sizes of the controls contained within. Eight Button controls have then been placed into the StackPanel, causing it to grow much larger than the ScrollViewer that contains it.

Windows Phone 7 : The Silverlight Controls (part 8) - Layout Controls - StackPanel Controls, Canvas Controls

If this should present an issue, you can work around it by using the Canvas control's Clip property. By applying a rectangular clipping area that exactly matches the size of the Canvas, anything that falls outside of that area will be clipped and obscured from view

Windows Phone 7 : The Silverlight Controls (part 7) - Layout Controls - Grid Controls

This control can seem somewhat puzzling to developers who encounter it in Silverlight after having worked with grid controls in WinForms development because the expectation is that it will offer functionality along the lines of a data grid, presenting tables of data to the user.

Windows Phone 7 : The Silverlight Controls (part 6) - Interactive Controls - ApplicationBar Controls

The ApplicationBar is responsible for displaying the small toolbars that are often seen at the bottom of the screen. It can hold up to a maximum of four image-based application buttons, and also a potentially unlimited number of menu items.

Windows Phone 7 : The Silverlight Controls (part 5) - Interactive Controls - CheckBox Controls, RadioButton Controls

A simple but useful control, the CheckBox allows simple boolean values to be gathered from the user. When the control's value is true, it displays a check mark within the control; when it is false, the box is shown empty.

Windows Phone 7 : The Silverlight Controls (part 4) - Interactive Controls - TextBox Controls, ListBox Controls, ComboBox Controls

The controls that we will look at for the purposes of allowing user interaction and data entry are the TextBox, ListBox, ComboBox, CheckBox, RadioButton, Button, and ApplicationBar.

Windows Phone 7 : The Silverlight Controls (part 3) - Line, Polyline, and Polygon Controls

None of these controls is available from the Toolbox; instead, they must be manually created within the XAML editor. Once the control has been declared, all its properties can be viewed and modified in the Properties window as usual.

Windows Phone 7 : The Silverlight Controls (part 2) - Display Controls - Ellipse and Rectangle Controls

As you might expect, these controls allow ellipses, circles, rectangles, and squares to be placed inside your page. They can be filled (using all the available brushes) or transparent, and can have a border around them.

Windows Phone 7 : The Silverlight Controls (part 1) - Display Controls -TextBlock Controls, Image Controls, ProgressBar Controls

Silverlight, unlike XNA, renders the actual underlying font to the screen rather than building a bitmap representation of the font. It is important, therefore, to select a font that exists on the device, rather than on your PC. Selecting one of the fonts from the FontFamily property list will ensure that this is the case.

Windows Phone 7 : Running Silverlight Projects in the Browser (part 2)

Here are two more simple conversions of Windows Phone 7 Silverlight examples that we created earlier. Neither of these has had any presentation attention lavished upon them, so they look extremely basic, but they demonstrate the direct conversion results that are achieved when converting into the browser-based Silverlight environment.

Windows Phone 7 : Running Silverlight Projects in the Browser (part 1)

The conversion of a Silverlight project from Windows Phone 7 into the general Silverlight environment is unfortunately not quite as straightforward as it is for XNA. Although a fair bit more effort is required, however, it is still possible to get your project moved across relatively unscathed.

Windows Phone 7 : Running XNA Projects in Windows (part 5)

XNA's trial mode does not function in Windows so it cannot be used to allow the player to switch between an evaluation or full copy of the game. You will need to implement this functionality yourself.

Windows Phone 7 : Running XNA Projects in Windows (part 4) - Converting the Game Framework to Run on Windows

The API for the class can remain identical across the two platforms, removing any need for the games using the class to have to cater separately for each target environment.

Windows Phone 7 : Running XNA Projects in Windows (part 3) - Input Differences, Isolated Storage, Application Life Cycle

The majority of Windows users will not have access to a touch screen, but the mouse can be used to provide most of the interaction that the touch screen can provide. The loss of multitouch input is offset by having multiple mouse buttons, and the mouse wheel available to most users.

Windows Phone 7 : Running XNA Projects in Windows (part 2) - Display Differences

There are several adjustments that need to be made in terms of the display when moving a project from Windows Phone 7 to Windows. Clearly, the two platforms have very different display devices and capabilities and you will need to make provision for these in order for your game to integrate nicely into both environments.

Windows Phone 7 : Running XNA Projects in Windows (part 1) - Porting Projects to Windows

If the Windows Phone 7 emulator is not running when you launch the project, you might find that it opens, even though you are not running the phone version of the game. You can simply minimize it to get it out of the way.

Windows Phone 7 : 3D Game Development (part 4) - Rendering 3D Models

A 3D model consists of triangle primitives, but are generally created in a third-party tool, such as Softimage Mod Tool, Daz Studio 3D, blender, or Caligari trueSpace, to name a few of the freely available modeling tools. Paint.NET is a free tool to create 2D textures.

Windows Phone 7 : 3D Game Development (part 3) - The Game Class

The Camera GameComponent object will need two public properties: View and Projection of type Matrix. Don't worry about what it means to define these terms as a Matrix type – it isn't critical. It is more important to think of the concepts above as we define them programmatically.

Windows Phone 7 : 3D Game Development (part 2) - Rendering 3D Primitives

Modern graphics hardware is optimized to render triangles. You can take it on to prove it to yourself by reviewing a 3D mathematics text but any 3D object can be modeled to have smooth edges with enough triangles.

Windows Phone 7 : 3D Game Development (part 1) - 3D Game Concepts

Programming in 2D is similar in process to hand-drawing a cartoon on paper. You can draw a scene in 2D that makes objects appear near or in the background, providing perspective that models the 3D real world. 3D game development results in the same 2D projection on a flat 2D screen, however, the path to rendering is very different.

Windows Phone 7 : AlienShooter Enhancements (part 2) - Tombstone Support, Particle System

A particle system randomly generates points or small area sprites with a random velocity and rotation, as well as a lifetime, such that the points fly out and then disappear much like you see in Hollywood movie effects. Particle systems can be very simple or extremely sophisticated, capable of generating water effects, fire, smoke, and explosions.

Windows Phone 7 : AlienShooter Enhancements (part 1) - Load and Save Game State

For our game, we automatically save game state when the user backs out of the GameplayScreen with a game in progress. The main menu screen is modified to include both New Game and Resume Game menu options that will resume an existing game if saved state is present. Automatic save keeps things simple and is a typical state management approach for many game developers.

Windows Phone 7 Programming Model : Application Execution Model

Windows Phone 7 is not currently a multitasking operating system, which begs the question: how does the operating system handle application switching and state? In this section, the Windows Phone 7 application execution model is discussed in detail.

Windows Phone 7 Programming Model : Bing Maps Control

The Bing Maps control provides full mapping capabilities on Windows Phone 7. The control is optimized for mobile performance, including map tiles optimized for mobile bandwidth speeds.

Windows Phone 7 Programming Model : Asynchronous Programming - Background Threads

This section covers asynchronous programming, which is the preferred method do to work in Silverlight. Asynchronous programming is preferred, because it takes work off of the UI thread, which should be a priority in order to maximize UI performance for animation and transitions.

Windows Phone 7 Programming Model : Web Browser Control

The WebBrowser controlis not a task, but it is related to the web browser task, so it makes sense to cover it here. The WebBrowser control is much more programmable than the WebBrowserTask covered in the previous section on Launchers.

Windows Phone 7 Programming Model : Tasks

Windows Phone 7 third-party applications run in a sandbox that is isolated from other third-party applications, as well as from the underlying operating system and hardware, except where APIs are surfaced.

Windows Phone 7 Programming Model : Application Data Persistence

Saving data to the file system is a necessity for most real applications. On Windows Phone 7, each application can access an isolated file system to read and write data that is only accessible to that application.

Windows Phone 7 Programming Model : Device Information

Developers need to understand the state of a device in order to provide the best experience for end users, such as letting the user know when a large download is about to begin and asking if the user would like to switch to a wireless or Ethernet connection via USB.

Handling Input on Windows Phone 7 : Microphone Input

The XNA Framework libraries make the Microphone available programmatically to applications. Add a reference to Microsoft.Xna.Framework assembly and a using clause for the Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio. The class of interest is the Microphone class that provides access to available microphones on the device.

Handling Input on Windows Phone 7 : Location

The location sensor is a very useful capability, given that mobile devices are generally on the go with their owner. Location provides context for applications that can make life easier on the user by automatically adjusting for the user's current location.

Handling Input on Windows Phone 7 : Accelerometer

The accelerometer can be an entertaining and engaging method of input, especially for game development with XNA Game Studio or Silverlight. We all have seen the car racing games on mobile phone or mobile gaming devices where the user is tilting the device like a steering wheel.

Windows Phone 7 : Using MVVM and Performing Unit Testing

You must write your application by using the MVVM pattern, then you will be able to write Unit Test for each ViewModel. To test your ViewModels, you need to use the Silverlight Unit Test Framework tweaked for Windows Phone 7 by Jeff Wilcox.

Windows Phone 7 : Implementing MVVM on Windows Phone by Using MVVMLight

You want your application implementation to have a consistent separation of concerns between modules. You want the view to have only the task of displaying information, and to remove from the view everything that requires some logic or data access.

Windows Phone 7 : In the Cloud - Creating a Feed Reader

For our application, we chose an Atom feed made available by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), but it's clear that you can use all feeds in Atom format.

Windows Phone 7 : In the Cloud - Interacting with WCF

Windows Phone was created to use services, but you should always remember one thing when you work with it: service access is always asynchronous, because (as with the use of services in Silverlight for the Web) you must not freeze the user interface.

Windows Phone 7 : Isolated Storage - Saving a Photo in Isolated Storage (part 2)

Run the application from Visual Studio by pressing F5. The application can run on either the physical device or the emulator. However, you will not be able to debug the application on the physical device if you are connected to Zune, because it stops the multimedia functionalities.

Windows Phone 7 : Isolated Storage - Saving a Photo in Isolated Storage (part 1)

In this recipe, you will play with some features of Windows Phone, combining them in an interesting application. You know how isolated storage works and how you can add files to it and open them.

Windows Phone 7 : Isolated Storage - Modifying Settings of Your Application

IsolatedStorageSettings enables you to easily and locally store user-specific data as key/value pairs in the object IsolatedStorageFile.

Windows Phone 7 : Isolated Storage - Saving Serialized Data

The XmlSerializer class serializes (and deserializes) objects to and from XML documents. In serialization, we convert an object and its properties to a serial format (in this case, XML) that can be stored (in our case) or transported (in the case of services, for example).

Windows Phone 7 : Saving a File in Isolated Storage and Loading It

The class that provides the ability to access data in isolated storage is IsolatedStorageFile, contained in the namespace System.IO.IsolatedStorage, which in turn is contained inside the mscorlib assembly.

Windows Phone 7 : Media Management - Adding Integration with the Music-Videos Hub

The Music-Videos hub is an aggregator application available from the Windows Phone 7 operating system. It groups all the applications installed on the phone that reproduce media files such as music and videos.

Windows Phone 7 : Sounding Out with Game Audio - Playing Music

The certification requirement complication for Windows Phone 7 games revolves around the fact that one of the other primary uses for the device is as a media player. The operating system has a flexible media library that allows music and other audio content to be played on the device, even when the media library has been moved to the background.

Windows Phone 7 : Playing Sound Effects

XNA provides a fair amount of flexibility for playing sound effects inside your games. It can play multiple sounds simultaneously (including multiple instances of the same sound) and offers control over volume levels, stereo panning, and pitch shifting.

Windows Phone 7 : Using the Microphone in the Funny Repeater Application

In the Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio namespace, the Microphone class is defined; this class provides access to the device's microphone. The Microphone class has the BufferReady event that is raised at regular intervals depending on the BufferDuration setting.

Windows Phone 7 Advanced UI Development : The Microsoft Advertising SDK

The Microsoft Advertising SDK provides mobile advertising support for Windows Phone 7. You are not required to use Microsoft's advertising SDK and associated advertising network. If you have an existing advertising network or an in-house creative and sales force, you can continue to use those resources for advertising revenue.

Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Toolkit (part 4) - LongListSelector Control

The LongListSelector control is the uber-ListBox control available for Windows Phone 7. It supports flat lists (like in a ListBox), but it can provide better performance than the standard ListBox control.

Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Toolkit (part 3) - WrapPanel Control

The WrapPanel control works very similarly to the same named control available in the desktop Silverlight toolkit. It arranges child items left to right, row by row or top to bottom, column by column.

Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Toolkit (part 2) - ContextMenu , DatePicker, TimePicker, ListPicker & ToggleSwitch Control

The ToggleSwitch control configures a boolean value as On or Off. It can take a simple Header attribute for a text value to display across the top above the switch and current status as shown in the first two ToggleSwitch controls in Figure 6.

Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Toolkit (part 1) - AutoCompleteBox Control

The toolkit was extended to Windows Phone 7 with the initial release for phone in September 2010, with the latest update available as of this writing releasing mid-November 2010.