Windows Phone

@da_dsgn Here's a link to the @WWE #WindowsPhone app, Danny. Let us know if this helps:

This blog post was authored by Craig Horsfield, a Senior SDET on the Windows Phone Test and Operations team. - Adam Testing your app throughout the development process can help you create a really great Windows Phone app. Testing helps ensure that your app is effectively represented in the Windows Phone Store as an app that offers Windows Phone users a high level of performance and quality. A small investment in the key areas described in this post can help you bypass common errors early in the development process, and help you get positive results in the long term. This post is part 2 of a 3-part series that outlines key test areas that you should consider before submitting your app to the Store. Push notification and Live Tiles Live Tiles Live Tiles are updated through push notification or through an app’s periodic background agent. When testing these areas, you should accelerate the update time so that you can test more rapidly. For more info, see Tiles for Windows Phone. Test scenario Details 1. Verify that your Live Tile updates. Verify that the Live Tile updates after it has been pinned to Start. 2. Verify that your Live Tile stops updating. If this setting is disabled in the app, make sure the Live Tile stops updating. 3. Verify that the Live Tile updates via a periodic agent. If the Live Tile is updated via a periodic agent, verify the update on all network types, and verify that the Live Tile updates when there is no network, for example, in Airplane mode. 4. Verify that the Live Tile is working and present after an app upgrade. None. 5. Verify that the Live Tile is working and present after an app upgrade and subsequent restarting the device. If updating the app, make sure that you don’t change the TokenID in the WMAppManifest.xml file. This results in your Live Tile being removed from Start when the device is restarted. 6. If using a background agent, verify that the agent doesn’t crash or terminate. This results in disabling the agent and Tile updates will fail. Notifications Apps that use notifications normally are used within background agents. Test these notifications to ensure that they work properly. For more info, see Notifications for Windows Phone. Test scenario Details 1. Verify that notifications are received. None. 2. Verify what happens when you tap the notification. Tapping the notification launches the user into the app in the correct state. 3. Verify that the app doesn’t overuse toast notifications. None. Agents Background agents provide key abilities for an app, but they also introduce some specific test considerations. Agents can be disabled and enabled in the phone’s settings, on the Settings > Application > Background Tasks screen. The app needs to be aware of the state of the agent. Resources available to agents also are restricted. A key point to remember is that when running in the debugger, these restrictions are not enforced so it’s important to test your app outside of the debugger and track the resource that it is using. For more info, see Background agents for Windows Phone. Test scenario Details 1. Verify initial app start. The agent starts when it’s needed. 2. Verify that the app handles state in which the agent has been disabled by the user in Settings\Application\Background Tasks. Additionally, verify that the app performs as follows: App notifies the user that it’s not available and continues to work as expected. App notifies that the agent is needed and re-enables it. 3. Agents are disabled in low-battery conditions - test that the app can handle these states. None. 4. Agents that crash or are terminated by the OS for exceeding resources, on two successive crashes will be disabled. Ensure your app handles this state. In this state the foreground app has to reschedule the agent. This state can be queried from the agent API. For more info, see Background agent best practices for Windows Phone. 5. Resource-inten

The good times just don't stop and this week was an absolute blast. Watch Paul and Laura bring you the news and please chime in with your comments on these stories and more:Xbox points for dollars [04:57]Microsoft tramp stamp! [11:24]Star Trek and Microsoft [17:07]

Many of you have heard about PhoneGap (aka Apache Cordova), the popular open source framework you can use to create mobile apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. PhoneGap has supported the Windows Phone platform since Windows Phone 7.5, and had a major update to support new capabilities in Windows Phone 8, including Internet Explorer 10. Today, we’re launching a Porting Challenge and inviting developers who have used PhoneGap to publish apps in other stores – for example, Apple iTunes, Google Play, Blackberry World, Bada, Symbian, or Palm OS – to take any of their existing PhoneGap apps, published in any store, and port it to Windows Phone 8, like the Untappd app recently ported to Windows Phone 8. Members of a panel selected from Microsoft, the Adobe PhoneGap team, and industry experts will choose 20 winners, based on apps that are: Original Innovative Easy to use Engaging and visually appealing to the user The panel will pick 3 grand prize winners who each will receive a Windows Phone 8 and a Surface Pro, and 17 first prize winners who each will receive a Windows Phone 8. All winning apps will be evaluated for featured slots in the Windows Phone Store. The challenge starts today, May 20, 2013. You have through June 30, 2013, to submit your app for this porting challenge. Winners will be announced July 19, 2013, at the PhoneGap Day event in Portland, Oregon. The challenge is open to developers in all countries/regions where Windows Phone Dev Center registration is available. Read the complete rules for all the details before you sign up at http://www.phonegapwpchallenge.com/. Whether you’re a seasoned PhoneGap developer new to Windows Phone, or if you’re new to PhoneGap, I encourage you check the pointers on how to get started on the challenge site: http://www.phonegapwpchallenge.com/Home/ResourcesWe have a 5-minute video tutorial that shows you how to set up PhoneGap with Visual Studio, and a few other detailed tutorials. We’ve also collected tips & tricks to adapt WebKit-optimized HTML5 code to Internet Explorer 10, and how to give your app UI a Windows Phone look and feel. If you’re curious to see examples of published Windows Phone apps that were built using the PhoneGap framework, head over to the PhoneGap website to browse their Windows Phone app gallery. Ready, set, go! JC Cimetiere@jccim

@jamesmhorton Here you go, James:

The popular digital magazine app Zinio arrived in the Windows Phone Store this week as an exclusive for Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 models. (Miss it? You can grab it here.) It’s a beautifully-designed app that should please any magazine junkie. But it gets better: To celebrate their debut, Zinio is also offering a $50 magazine credit to jump start your library. Click here to claim the credit. The deal ends June 30. Zinio has an impressive stable of publications to pick from—everything from mainstream titles like The Economist, Esquire, and Rolling Stone to niche offerings such as Poker Player and Simply Crochet. Reader-friendly features of the official Windows Phone app include the ability to pull articles from multiple sources into your own customized reading list and read magazines offline. Zinio also serves up free articles each day from a selection of top-drawer titles. Check it out and let me know what you think.

This blog post was authored by Joao Lucas Guberman Raza, a program manager on the Windows Phone team. - Adam In this post we cover important information for Windows Phone 8 developers who use the XAudio2 APIs, including best practices for battery performance. XAudio2 is a high-performance audio API available in Windows 8, Xbox 360, and Windows Phone 8. An app developer can use XAudio2 to create audio graphs in which they can treat each audio source in the graph as a distinct “voice.” The developer can apply different effects to each of the “voices.” In Windows Phone 8, the XAudio2 engine must be aligned with the life cycle of the app. This means that if an app is suspended, the app that’s using XAudio2 must force the XAudio2 engine to stop. When the app resumes/rehydrates, if it is designed to resume sounds using XAudio2, it must restart the XAudio2 engine. Significant battery drain can occur if an app doesn’t stop the XAudio2 engine when the app is suspended, and the engine continues to run. To avoid this scenario, an app must call IXAudio2::StopEngine when the app is suspended as described in the Native audio APIs for Windows Phone 8. When the app is resumes, it should call IXAudio2::StartEngine. For Silverlight and Direct3D with XAML apps, the suspend/resume APIs are the Suspended and Activated events. For Direct3D native-only apps, the suspend/resume APIs are the Suspending and CoreView Resuming events. The following code examples show you how you can do this in a pure native Direct3D app. First create the XAudio2 object, which handles the XAudio2 sound APIs. C++ IXAudio2* pXAudio = NULL ; if( FAILED(XAudio2Create(&pXAudio, 0, XAUDIO2_DEFAULT_PROCESSOR) ) )         return false ; if ( FAILED(pXAudio->CreateMasteringVoice( &pMasterVoice ) ) )         return false; Then, on the suspending/resume events, set up the XAudio2 object to call StopEngine and then StartEngine. In the following example, we use the default events in the Windows Phone 8 SDK template for Direct3D native-only apps. C++ void WindowsApp::Initialize(CoreApplicationView^ applicationView)     {     applicationView->Activated +=         ref new TypedEventHandler(this, &WindowsApp::OnActivated);     CoreApplication::Suspending +=         ref new EventHandler(this, &WindowsApp::OnSuspending);     CoreApplication::Resuming +=         ref new EventHandler(this, &WindowsApp::OnResuming);     } void WindowsApp::OnSuspending(Platform::Object^ sender, SuspendingEventArgs^ args) {     pXAudio->StopEngine() ; }    void WindowsApp::OnResuming(Platform::Object^ sender, Platform::Object^ args)    {     pXAudio->StartEngine() ; } With these steps, you can design your app to follow best practices for battery consumption when you use the XAudio2 APIs. It’s important to note that this is one of many best practices you can use in your app. To learn more, see also local folder best practices for Windows Phone, localization best practices for Windows Phone, and background agent best practices for Windows Phone.

Jing Chan talks about his personal history as a developer and his experience creating CamWow.

Your Windows Phone 8 app presents three potential sources of revenue: app sales, in-app advertisement, and in-app purchases. In a previous blog post I wrote about what you can sell in your Windows Phone 8 app by adding in-app purchase. You can: Sell digital items. Offer consumables (items that are used a set number of times per purchase) and durables (items purchased and then owned by the buyer). Extend app features: add game levels, app features, and game currency, for example. Today, I want to share recommendations and guidance to optimize the experience and effectiveness of in-app purchase in your Windows Phone app. In-app purchase trends in the Windows Phone store In-app purchase was added with the launch of Windows Phone 8 as a way to expand the value of apps and offer the possibility of additional revenue. It represents a growing revenue source in the Windows Phone Store: already 40% of the top 15 highest-grossing developers have apps that use in-app purchase. Consumer adoption of in-app purchase

BBC has finally launched it’s iPlayer on windows phone platform. The iPlayer links BBC mobile site to BBC Media Player App. The app allows user to minimize the player to listen to audio only, while multitasking on other stuff, or to save content for later. BBC Media Player App works well in 3G or WiFi connection. Sadly enough the app does not work on Windows Phone 7.5, or older software. BBC Media Player App launches the same day as the newest and the best windows phone out there, the Nokia Lumia 925. Lumia 925 features some new software like Smart Camera, which allows you to take 10 consecutive shots at once, so that you can choose the best one of the pack. Be mindful of the storage, each photo has 5 megapixels. This feature is particularly useful in action shots. As for hardware, new Lumia 925 features 8.7 megapixels PureView camera with Carl Zeiss lens and Xenon flash which improves photo-taking in the bad light conditions. The polycarbonate body has been replaced with metal that works as an antena.