October 2012

Exiting programmatically as always been an issue for Silverlight applications on Windows Phone 7. A few workaround existed, from throwing an exception to referencing a XNA assembly and using the ‘Game.Exit()’ method. Windows Phone 8 brings a new API, that can be used from Silverlight applications: ‘Application.Terminate()’ Using it is really straightforward: A word of advice though: calling this method will immediately kill your app. It means that the ‘Application.Closing’ event won’t be triggered, and the contents of the ‘IsolatedStorageSettings.ApplicationSettings’ dictionary won’t be automatically saved to the isolated storage. Therefore, if needed, don’t forget to save that dictionary before calling the ‘Terminate’ method:Read More →

Windows Phone 8 introduces a new API to allow apps to change the background picture displayed on the lock screen. The displayed picture can be picked from the application’s resources or from the isolated storage. To use this feature, you need first to declare it in the application’s manifest. Just add the following extension in the “Extensions” node: If you don’t already have an “Extensions” node in the manifest, you’ll have to add it at the same level as the “Capabilities” and “Tasks” nodes: Once the manifest is updated, there’s one remaining step before being able to change the wallpaper: the application must first askRead More →