| Windows Phone 7 Tips

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Windows Phone 7

From Wikipedia:

Windows Phone 7 is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft, and is the successor to their Windows Mobile platform.[2] It launched in Europe, Singapore and Australasia on October 21, 2010, and in the US & Canada on November 8, 2010, with Asia to follow in 2011.[3] With Windows Phone 7, Microsoft offers a new Metro user interface, integrates the operating system with Microsoft's other services, and plans to strictly control the hardware it runs on.[4]
Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 7 on February 15, 2010, at Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona[5] and revealed additional details at MIX 2010 on March 15. Windows Phone 7 was released to manufacturing on September 1, 2010,[6] and the final SDK was made available on September 16, 2010.[7]

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Credits To : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone_7

Windows Phone 7 Tips and Tricks (III)

Windows Phone 7 features a special notifications system that is supposed to supplement the lack of full-blown multitasking. Microsoft's current approach at multitasking is intended to improve battery life, as it only keeps a few pre-defined apps resident in the smartphone's memory.

Even though this system is already beneficial in terms of energy savings, a few tips that will help Windows Phone 7 smartphone owners preserve their battery cannot hurt.

The safest and easiest way to save battery is to disable some of the system's features and functions that are usually running in the background or open when a certain action is started. Of course, if you need any of the features mentioned below do not turn it off.

One of the main battery energy eaters is the Location service, which checks your location automatically, every now and then.

You won't need this one unless you want to use the included geo-tagging feature or you want to know where you are located on the map.

To toggle these services browse into the Location option, Settings and slide the button to Off or On.

In case you really need to know where you are on Bing maps, but you don't need the Geo-tagging feature, you can simply turn it off from Settings, Applications, Pictures & Camera and choose Off from the “include location (GPS) information in pictures you take.”

Data roaming is another feature that eats the battery's energy, but also “boosts” your bill if you're browsing the Internet when you're abroad without using a Wi-Fi connetion. You can turn the feature off from Settings and Mobile Network.

It is also advised to turn off 3G connectivity if you're not planning to use it for faster Internet browsing. You can find the switch to toggle between WCDMA and GSM mode in the Settings, Mobile Network menu.

Feel free to suggest your own Windows Phone 7 tips and tricks, especially if you're an advanced user.

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Credits To : http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-Phone-7-Tips-and-Tricks-III-164621.shtml

Windows Phone 7 Tips and Tricks (II)

Recently launched on the mobile OS market, Windows Phone 7 has many strong points, but some weaknesses as well. Its competitors, Android and iOS, had even longer lists of unsupported features and bugs at launch, but were prepared for the outcome and managed to fix them relatively quickly.

Another issue that Microsoft is confronting with is the lack of mass availability of the devices running its new mobile platform.

There still isn’t a lot of practical information about Windows Phone 7 available, so the following guide contains tips for those that already got their WP7 smartphone and would like a few basic pointers about the OS's capabilities.

An interesting feature that has been embedded into Windows Phone 7 is called “Find my Phone” and helps users locate their device if they lost it or it has been stolen.

Users can activate the function from the Settings, Find my Phone option, as the feature is not enabled by default. “Find my Phone” saves the user's location at certain, previously set intervals.

The integrated web browser features an option that can switch off mobile browsing, which makes Internet Explorer display only the desktop versions of the websites. Users can toggle the function on/off from the Settings, Applications, Internet Explorer menu.

Adding a bookmark for a favorite website on the Start screen can be easily done by clicking on the three dots displayed at the bottom of the screen and choosing “Pin to start”. The three dots always appear when you have more options and works just like the Menu button for Android OS.

Internet Explorer includes a useful "Find" feature that allows users to find a specific word on a webpage they are visiting. Simply press on the three dots, choose “Find on page” and type in the word you want to search for.

Feel free to add your own Windows Phone 7 tips and tricks, especially if you're an advanced user.

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Credits To : http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-Phone-7-Tips-and-Tricks-II-164347.shtml

Windows Phone 7 Tips and Tricks (I)

Still new on the market, Windows Phone 7 has been strongly backed by smartphone manufacturers such as HTC, Samsung and LG. Following the operating system's announcements, a set of seven devices running Microsoft's new mobile OS were launched on the market. If you are one of the lucky few that managed to get their hands on one of these Windows Phone 7 devices, then you're in for some first steps into uncharted grounds.

The following guide contains a few tips for those that already got their WP7 smartphone and would like a few basic pointers about the OS's capabilities.

Much of the Windows Phone 7 UI is based on hubs, which can be added, deleted, edited or moved. The same goes for the Start screen which is populated by default with only a handful of hubs. To add a new application to the homescreen, long press the icon of the app until a contextual menu will show up and choose “Pin to start”.

Uninstalling an application that you don't need anymore can be easily done following the same process described above. Go to the list of applications, press and hold on the app's icon and select “Uninstall” from the contextual menu.

Favorite contacts can also be pinned on the Start screen for speed dial. Simply browse the Contacts hub until you find the person you want and click on the “Pin” icon next to the name.

Windows Phone 7 comes with support for voice controls. To start the feature simply press and hold the Windows key below the screen and start giving voice commands to your phone.

Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 embeds an interesting option called “Correct misspelled words.” The feature is designed to assist those that are typing quickly using the on-screen keyboard. The option can be toggled from the Settings / Keyboard menu.

Feel free to suggest your own Windows Phone 7 tips and tricks, especially if you're an advanced user.

Credits To : http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-Phone-7-Tips-and-Tricks-I-164114.shtml

Windows Phone 7 Tips and Tricks (IV)

For users that recently managed to grab a Windows Phone 7 device and are keen to discover what goodies its OS has to offer, here are a few tips to get them started.

The Voice Control feature of any Windows Phone 7 smartphone can be activated by pressing and holding the Windows key at the bottom of the screen. The feature helps users open various applications by voice commands.

Moving a specific Hub that you just created and pinned on the Start screen can be easily done by pressing and holding on the tile in question and moving it up or down.

By default, new hubs are added at the bottom of the Start screen. To remove one simply hold and press your finger on the tile until you get the „no pin“ icon on the display and click it.

To set up a Google Apps mail account you will need to enable Mobile mail for the system to work. That requires users to log in to their Google Apps dashboard and tick next to the „Enable Google Sync“ option, which can be found into Service settings, Mobile menu.

Users can also lock their phone's screen in order to avoid making accidental calls when the device is kept in a pocket. Simply go to the Settings area and choose Lock & Wallpaper, then click on any of the five options offered: 30 seconds, 1 minute, 3 minutes, 5 minutes or never.

By default, the phone's Start screen includes a People hub where all the user's contacts are displayed. Adding or removing Facebook contacts from the People hub can be done from the Settings area, Applications, People and choosing to „Show all my Facebook friends“ or „Only add Facebook information to existing contacts“.

Feel free to suggest your own Windows Phone 7 tips and tricks, especially if you're an advanced user.

Credits To : http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-Phone-7-Tips-and-Tricks-IV-164832.shtml

Windows Phone 7 Developer Tips and Tricks

On the heels of the Windows Phone Developer Tools and Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkitreleases I saw a lot of exhaling going on in the hallways today. Apparently Jeff saved his largest one for an avalanche of knowledge on Twitter in the late afternoon. Jeff Wilcox is a developer on the Silverlight team and has been working on the Silverlight for Windows Phone initiative as well as the toolkit released today. He was headed out on vacation but decided to throw out some words of wisdom for Windows Phone developers working in Silverlight. Here’s some of those nuggets – I wanted to capture them before he left because who knows how long they’ll stay in Twitter. It reads like a true guide to developing great apps on Windows Phone…

Panorama looks nice, but Pivot will offer faster start time.
You can also set a Background image to a Pivot. You won't get the parallax effect, but it is another option.
Be aware of how many pano and pivot items you do have. Memory expands quick when you have a lot of views and images!
Even if you have a 30k compressed JPEG image, at runtime that becomes an uncompressed surface that may take several MBs of memory
Pivot and Panorama can have UI element headers and titles, too, but you'll need to apply your own styling (fonts and sizes)
Beware that UI elements larger than 2000x2000 pixels that are bitmap cached clip on Windows Phone 7. We know it isn't perfect, but beware k?
Setting SelectedIndex before the items are set on a Pivot causes an exception. Wrap in a try/catch or wait for loaded (sorry!)
A slideshow app in 5 minutes: Pivot with null Header and Title and item headers. Beware memory use though.
A lot of people try building 'wizard' screens with panorama & pivot control. Please don't do this! Thx, the "UX gods"
Layout is a killer. But like death, you eventually have to pay it for everything.
So consider delay loading controls and screens. A Panorama with a billion items will take forever to load due to layout.
If you're not using PerformanceProgressBar, I'll send @JustinAngel after you ProgressBar for Windows Phone 7
If your app rocks and starts really quick *on a device* consider not using a splash screen
It's true. Your 6-core machine running the wp7 emulator is NOT indicative of device (single core!) performance. Beware!
We've talked perf before... Content over Resources for images means fast startup timehttp://bit.ly/9DhVbd
If you're using Panorama, a Resource background will load immediately compared to Content
Remember that for ingestion to the marketplace, your apps need to consume under 90MB of memory
However on devices with > 256MB, its cool to use more *in those cases
long deviceTotalMemory = (long)DeviceExtendedProperties.GetValue("DeviceTotalMemory");
long applicationCurrentMemoryUsage = (long)DeviceExtendedProperties.GetValue("ApplicationCurrentMemoryUsage");
long applicationPeakMemoryUsage = (long)DeviceExtendedProperties.GetValue("ApplicationPeakMemoryUsage")
Your compositor thread should rock out around 60fps all the time please. #wp7dev perf counters:http://bit.ly/busJIi
If your UI thread gets pegged, your compositor thread will suffer... remember your BackgroundWorker kids!
Unfortunately the "Analytics" type from desktop Silverlight is not on the phone today, so you can't measure CPU in a regular app
Having a single DispatcherTimer in your app can affect your battery life regardless of interval. Chose wisely
You can set the Foreground property on Pivot to set the title and header text color
Using a map control inside a Panorama or Pivot is not recommended for a number of UX and technical reasons. Navigate to a subpage.
Please use text styles and never hardcode sizes or default fonts.
The panorama/pivot items expect most their contents to have a 12px margin left/right for UX reasons. The default styles have this.
So if you have something in a pano/pivot item with 0 margin & padding, your UX will be funky
Fill rate is super important. Keep it under 2.5 please
What is fill rate? 1.00 means one screen of pixels being rendered every frame.
Check your apps for extra, un-needed background colors on pages, controls, etc.. They impact perf.
That sexy "tilt" effect? Use Peter's behavior http://bit.ly/90Z1yR and/or check out the MSDN docs
DataTemplates with a bunch of StackPanels and Grids? Try to simplify to a Grid with the right col/rows instead for perf wins.
Unit testing in a quick and dirty way is possible on the Windows Phone thx to the sl unit test fx.http://bit.ly/a0DWah
Only use Dispatcher.BeginInvoke when you must. Look at SmartDispatcher (ps old code sry)http://bit.ly/axHh36
For a "wide" Panorama item, set the item's Orientation to "Horizontal"
Play with the cache and redraw vis. settings to see what's being cached in your app http://bit.ly/busJIi
Things in a list/scroll viewer are often automatically bitmap cached by Silverlight for Windows Phone runtime
If you have a progress bar with IsIndeterminate="True" in your app, even if its hidden those storyboards are costly! Set to False!
We did work on Windows Phone 7 to move more networking to the background thread - hope it helps
When a Panorama loads, all its items go through a render pass. For pivot, it is done incrementally for neighboring items.
When making web requests, see if the service lets you scope down the fields that are returned for quicker perf (and JSON over XML!)
If you navigate to a subpage, the old page will stick around - so complex pano/pivot pgs stay in memory unless you're proactive
The "app deployment tool" installed with the dev tools lets you run others apps in emulator/device without needing source
We optimize for loading some things from isolated storage. Images from an isostore stream may load faster than a MemoryStream
If your source files have "Black" or "White", you might be doing it wrong. PhoneForegroundBrush, PhoneBackgroundBrush instead!
If your control's dep. property has a change handler, animating that prop. will always happen on the UI thread (no gpu accel.)
Animating Opacity on a CacheMode="BitmapCache" element = compositor thread (GPU!)
In the RTM tools, scroll viewers all have the "bounce" effect automatically
If you ignore the phone's theme (and go all light bg, like the mail app), your scrollbarsmust be retemplated or you won't see them!
Although data binding is not evil, an observable col. with a complex data temp. and 200k items is evil.
The web browser control won't let you NavigateToString until it has loaded.
If you have an app with a lot of different web browser controls, think about consolidating to one, so it only has to load once.
Panorama is designed to be a starting place. Think whitespace. Not tons of data
Free performance win: when you use Panorama the way the UX guidelines recommend, it is faster!http://bit.ly/9zTxtU
Those theme xamls for #wp7? Yeah they are in %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Design\
Resist the urge to Panorama every app. It is a sweet UX thing when used right…but not just because.
Resist the urge to iPhone gradient your apps. Think outside the box! Also it avoids color banding...

So as you can see, he sort of knows what he’s talking about :-). Go subscribe to his blog and follow him on Twitter. Other helpful links:

Credits To : http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2010/09/16/windows-phone-7-developer-tips-and-tricks.aspx

15 Awesome Tips

So you’ve purchased a Windows Phone 7 smartphone and can’t wait to get started using it. Here are some tips to help you along the way.

1. Arrange Start screen icons – Tap and hold the icon you wish to move until it becomes larger in size, then drag it to a new location.

2. Add new icons to Start screen – From the arrow > applications, tap and hold the selection for about 2 seconds, then drag it to the Start screen.

3. Use Facebook – Add Facebook by going to settings > email & accounts > add an account > Facebook.

4. Delete apps – From the arrow > applications screen, tap and hold any app and you will be provided an uninstall option.

5. Save image from browser – Just tap and hold any image in the IE web browser and you’ll be able to save the picture.

6. Save image from text message – Just like the browser, tap and hold the image in the messaging app and you can save the picture.

7. Check network bars – Tap the top of the screen to reveal your signal strength.

8. Voice commands – Press and hold the windows button to use voice commands like “Call Jeff” or “Open Messaging”.

9. Set screen timeout – Set how long the screen stays on before sleeping. settings > lock & wallpaper > screen time-out.

10. Sync with Outlook – Use the Hotmail connector to sync your phone data with Outlook.

11. Speed dial contacts – In contacts, tap the pin and the contact will be added to the Start screen for easy access.

12. Install apps – The Marketplace app is where you can find and purchase new apps.

13. Make a conference call – Press the down arrow during the first call and you have the option to add call.

14. Change wallpaper – Customize your phone. Settings > lock & wallpaper > change wallpaper.

15. Enable flight mode – When going on an airplane or if you just want quiet time, go to settings > flight mode > on.

Credits To : http://www.lockergnome.com/oztech/2010/10/26/15-awesome-windows-phone-7-tips/