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Windows Phone

Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1

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 to the Windows […]

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Windows Phone

Windows Phone Update due shortly

Microsoft have published details of a new update (7.10.8107.79) which adds a number of fixes to the Mango release. It fixes the issue where the on screen keyboard will randomly hide itself which I’ve been finding frustrating recently and also a fix for the SMS bug which could disable messaging. It also hopefully finally resolves […]

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Windows Phone

Submitting Apps to Marketplace with Background Tasks

I’ve been working on an update to the Tasks application which adds in background synchronisation using the new background task support in Windows Phone 7.5. As with any app when you submit your XAP static analysis is performed on it to check, for example, that you have declared the correct capabilities based on the functionality in […]

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Windows Phone

Windows Phone 7: Localisation and Windows Phone Features

Anyone who has built an application for Windows Phone 7 in multiple languages will know there are three parts to the process. Within your application you can use managed RESX resource files to provide localised strings. For your application title or the initial text for your Live Tile you must use native resource dlls. Then […]

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Windows Phone

Windows Phone 7: More Tilt Effect

The Silverlight Toolkit for Windows Phone (Latest version is February 2011) contains a Tilt Effect implementation. To add it to your controls requires the addition of an XML namespace definition and one dependency propery set in your page XAML. <phone:PhoneApplicationPage …etc… xmlns:toolkit=”clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit” toolkit:TiltEffect.IsTiltEnabled=”True”>   However the implementation doesn’t apply the effect to all the same […]

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Windows Phone

Copyable TextBlock for Windows Phone

The latest update for Windows Phone 7 adds automatic support for Copy and Paste to TextBox controls in your application. By default this means you can’t copy text from static TexBlock controls. There is however a solution which requires minimal changes to implement. You have to replace the TextBlock control with a TextBox and set […]

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Windows Phone

Win a Windows Phone 7 LG E900

Following my review of the LG E900 handset we have the opportunity for one lucky winner to get a Windows Phone 7 of their own. All you need is a little creativity and this handset could be on its way to you! Good luck!

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Windows Phone

Localised Resources for Silverlight Toolkit Nov 2010

Due to the absence of a built-in DatePicker control many are using the Silverlight Toolkit which has a Silverlight implementation to match the control used in the native applications. One limitation in the current release is that the UI is only available in English. The day/month names are retrieved based on the device locale but […]

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Windows Phone

Marketplace for Emulator

The Windows Phone 7 Emulator takes a fairly bare-bones approach having only Internet Explorer available by default. Because it’s easier when presenting to use the Emulator than to try and capture a device screen with a camera it would be nice to show off features of the platform as part of your demonstration – not […]

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Windows Phone

Using Microsoft.Phone.Tasks in the Emulator

The Windows Phone 7 emulator is very limited compared with the real phones so there are no built in applications other than Internet Explorer. This can make it difficult to test some of the APIs which interact with data on the device. Luckily there is a way to load contact data onto the emulator which […]