Beginning Windows® Phone 7 Application Development: Building Windows® Phone Applications Using Silverlight® and XNA®

SUMMARY

This chapter examined some of the unique features that enable you to interact with Windows Phone 7 applications and that Windows Phone 7 applications can use to access built-in features. You saw how to add an application bar containing icons and short text commands to your applications. This is a great way to expose common functionality, especially if you design your icons to fit in with the Windows Phone 7 style. This will make your user interfaces as intuitive as possible.

Next, you moved on to launchers and choosers, and you saw how to take advantage of Windows Phone 7 functionality. Again, by delegating responsibility to other applications in the Windows Phone 7 operating system, you can increase usability in your applications. You also don't have to worry too much about things like contact databases; all that is built in, so why replicate it?

Finally, you looked at customizing user text input with the SIP and multitouch input. Multitouch, in particular, is something that you can make fantastic use of if you want to. This is still a relatively new technology, and exciting new ways of using it are emerging all the time.

In the next chapter, you'll look at how to interact with remote services, including location information and more.

EXERCISES

1. A designer supplies you with a set of application bar icons that are multicolored 48 × 48 pixel images. Is it a good idea to use them in your application?
2. Which of the following functionality can you implement with launchers and ...