When a user is idle, their screen locks and your Windows Phone application is suspended. This might be undesired, like for:  a timer, certain games, and driving directions. We have two properties to consider: The UserIdleDetectionMode property The...

In this live session I will be stepping through the process to add a database your Windows Phone applications. In fact, I will be discussing the three core techniques I wrote about in these articles: Using Code-First Using SQL Metal Using SQL Toolbox...

Whoa! I am getting a lot of questions on data validation. This warrants an article. Of course, we have many choices. Some are prescriptive, some are simple, and some are just not reliable. For now, I will just limit data entry to valid numbers. That doesn...

External Data? Sure; data doesn’t have to be local. Like, some applications are multi-targeted. They allow users to log in on their phone, desktop, tablet, Xbox, work PC, and even fringe technologies like Droid, IPhone, and IPad. These apps probably persist...

Some Windows Phone applications will need to identify the user. Most Windows Phone users have a Windows Live ID. So, leverage that Windows Live ID. How? Use OAuth2. In June 2011, the Windows Live Developer platform added OAuth2 to seamlessly access Live...

Writing Windows Phone applications is tricky when users switch between the light and dark phone themes. The light theme is a white background, the dark is black. If your images are white on black, users in the light theme will think your application looks...

There are lots of things that take a long time - a politician's apology, dance recitals, and sometimes C# operations. if you don’t want your UI to freeze during these operations, it is important to make them asynchronous. Option 1: The Event Pattern One...

Building Windows Phone applications, you have options for data. Sometimes you might want to use XML files. Warning: using XML files is like serialized Isolated Storage data – you need to load the entire document into memory to filter it. But, what if...

In recent posts I discussed two ways to add a local database to your Windows Phone applications.  The first was code-first. This decorates classes and creates the database programmatically. The second was SQL Metal. This command-line tool generates...

In a WPF application you say App.Exit() and your application terminates. It’s not so simple in Windows Phone. Since there is no Exit() method – it’s hard to know what to do. I’ll assumption there are valid reasons to exit your application. One example...

Storing Windows Phone application data is a pretty normal requirement. If you want it to persist across sessions, or even phone reboots, you really have three options: Save to the Cloud Save to Isolated Storage Save to Local Database Each is correct for...

Storing Windows Phone application data is a pretty normal requirement. If you want it to persist across sessions, or even phone reboots, you really have three options: Save to the Cloud Save to Isolated Storage Save to Local Database Each is correct for...

Storing Windows Phone application data is a pretty normal requirement. If you want it to persist across sessions, or even phone reboots, you really have three options: Save to the Cloud Save to Isolated Storage Save to Local Database Each is right for...

Windows Phone has an on-screen keyboard. We call it the SIP (Software Input Panel). It appears when users give focus to a TextBox. The configuration of SIP keys varies by how the developer sets up the TextBox’s InputScope property. Here are three configurations...

Odata is a standard method to expose data through a WCF service. Typical services have GetThis() & GetThat() methods, Odata services expose Queriable interfaces that allow consumers to define data queries on the fly. Odata delivers data as standard...

The Model View View-Model pattern is intended for applications that have State, like a Silverlight application. There are 3 parts: The Model The View The View-Model The Model The Model is your database object. If you are using SQL Server and have a Products...

This article is about adding charts to Windows Phone applications. But I wanted to start by acknowledging that Component Art has wonderful data visualization controls for Windows Phone. I will focus this article on a free option. So you want charts? Well...