Where to get icons for your app?

So, you need some icons for use in your app. If you just need icons for the application bar buttons, then start with the ones that come with the SDK. You'll find them at "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Icons\Dark\" and these are also the ones that Blend can add for you. If...

Microsoft's advice about Panoramas is wrong!

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10 Tips for designing your mobile APIs

It's common for a mobile application to need to communicate with a web/cloud based service. At its simplest this will be just to retrieve data but it could also include sending data and user authorisation and management. If you have to build the API that your application will use the following tips may be useful: 1. Version your API (from the very beginning) At some point in the future the API will...

Debugging binding issues is hard. Having simpler code makes it easier.

Recently I had to deal with a strange bug. Sometimes the menu option to create a secondary tile was not being enabled when it should be. After analysis I was able to get the most consistent reproduction of the issue on a lower spec device (a Lumia 620). Obviously this isn't acceptable so a solution had to be found. I tracked the most likely candidate to the `CanPin()` method. You can see the "before"...

3 MiFi topup fail

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Online privacy when building apps for kids

This weekend just gone I was at the Windows Phone 8 Lock-in organised by Dev4Good, so issues around apps for children and young people is on my mind at the moment. That's probably why this caught my eye: http://momswithapps.com/category/online-privacy/ It's a set of resources relating to online privacy curated specifically for people creating educational apps for children. If you're building...

Azure Mobile Services error: "The request could not be completed. ()"

Having just published my first (Windows Phone - obviously) app using Azure Mobile Services, I thought I'd share something I learnt in the process. When first testing on an actual device (always test on actual devices!) I hit an issue where the MobileServicesClient was failing with the following message being intercepted by the Application level UnhandledExceptionHandler: "The request could not be...

AccentComplimentBrush v2.0

Yesterday I showed my new AccentComplimentBrush as a way of having a second color that can be used within an app and will work with whatever accent color has been chosen. There was one big issue though. It only worked with the default accent colors in Windows Phone 8. I've just pushed a new version to GitHub that is both forwards and backwards compatible. It now works on both Windows Phone 7.X...

Using a complimentary accent color

Sometimes you may want to use two colors in an app. If it was just one then I'm sure you'd just go with the Accent color. The acccent colors all work well when on Black or White. The problem though is that there is no single other color that can be combined well with any accent color and you probably...

Telford: done! Next it's Bristol.

Last month I talked about Windows Phone 8 development at the university in Telford. Next week it's the UWE in Bristol. The feedback from Telford was very positive.There were 3 questions on the feedback form and each was marked on a scale of 1 to 10. The talk was well delivered and I could understand...

NCLDR on Windows Phone 8

Earlier this week, uber-UK-community-bod and I18n expert, Guy Smith-Ferrier announced the alpha launch of NCLDR. If you're not familiar with CLDR you can think of it as being like a version of the Globalization parts of the .net framework with lots of added extras. NCLDR is a .net port that allows...