In Windows Phone 8 the Windows.System.Launcher class allows you to open files with apps which are registered to handle them. On Windows Phone you have built in support for Office documents and audio and video formats. Lets say you want to open a PDF either remotely or downloaded by your app. There isn't...

I recently needed to create a prototype for a Windows Phone application and having recently discovered it I decided to use Indigo Studio to build it. The application is not particularly designed for Windows Phone however it has enough standard UI controls and customisations to make it easy to create...

In my previous post I discovered a limitation with using the Share... extension point in the Photos app. The good news is that from within your own app you can open .png files. For this you can use the PhotoChooserTask which has been available since Windows Phone 7. This presents the user with essentially...

On Windows Phone 8 it is possible to register your app with the Share... extension point on the photo viewer. This allows your app to receive an image file and process it whether that is sending it to an online service or manipulating it on the device. I found recently an odd quirk with the feature....

With the recent announcement of Windows Embedded Handheld 8 it seems fitting to discuss something related to industrial and line-of-business applications which you can develop now on the Windows Phone platform. I've released the first drop of 32feet.NET for Windows Phone 8 to our CodePlex site and...

The Bluetooth API on Windows Phone 8 is based around some customisations to the Proximity APIs which are part of the Windows API introduced with Windows 8. When you "discover" devices you can retrieve a collection of device identifiers for paired devices. The first time you perform a task you...

iCalendar files are based on the set of data exchange specifications which also includes vCards. You may come across them either in emails or from a website. For example some sites which sell travel tickets allow you to download your itinerary in an iCalendar file. While Windows Phone has always supported...

At MWC today Nokia announced the Lumia 610 which is a lower spec device designed for emerging markets. This is running an updated Windows Phone OS which supports devices with just 256MB of RAM. To enable developers to create apps which support the new lower memory devices Microsoft are releasing an update...

The latest update to Tasks is now available in the Marketplace. This release continues the improvements to the sync experience by providing more resilience in situations where the network drops out during a sync. It also improves the reminders feature in Windows 7.5 and improves the display of reminders...

A few of you who attended the Windows Phone Camp in Bristol asked about the slides and code from the Storing Data and Cloud/Networking session. I've uploaded the latest versions of these slides and the additional Sockets code project to the FTP site. All the links and resources mentioned during the...