PART 2 – This post is a continuation of the small breakdown of the process I went through to build the Golden Goose app now available on the Windows App Marketplace for release to the world. The idea for the app was rather simple to come up with – it is a simple tool that would be useful to me – and hopefully useful to others. Beanstalk provides a hosted SVN service that I use for development – having an app available that can monitor commits to the repos by my team while I’m out of the office is something that I thought would be handy. It doesn’t need to be heavily featured with the ability to make mobile commits, edit my account level, or add/delete repos – it just needs to be able to view what’s gone on with any of my repos and make simple user editing available (ie, add a new user).
With that said I’m not going to step you through the app-specific coding process I took on but rather I’ll introduce some of the components that are part of my workflow. These tools made developing an app for the Windows Phone easier and let me build, prototype, and release an app all within a very short timeframe.
Telerik Controls
In January I attended a user group meeting near my home town – the East of Toronto User Group and was lucky enough to win a prize – Telerik’s Windows Phone Control Suite! The controls were still in Beta but I managed to snag a full copy upon their release – and a “Go Live” license so that I could launch anything I created using the Beta tools (unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to take advantage of that).
I had begun using Telerik’s WebUI controls for ASP.NET at work a month or two previously and was generally happy with Telerik’s ease-of-use and flexibility so winning a copy of their WP7 controls made me pretty happy – I couldn’t wait to try them out. As it turns out the Telerik controls for Windows Phone are really well thought out and easy to use; there aren’t too many controls in the package yet but these are early days. Three more controls have already been semi-announced for inclusion in their set next quarter so obviously this is a market Telerik believes in.
After reviewing the controls I settled on using the Application Frame and the Window controls; mixing these two controls with some animation would achieve the subtle polish effects I was aiming for without just turning into eye-candy.
I chose to use Telerik’s controls mainly in between page loads and screen changes. So, when the app first loads it checks to see if you’ve already set your connection to authenticate with Beanstalk’s servers – if you haven’t then a Telerik Window control is brought up on screen to be filled in.
The Application Frame is used when transitioning from the Repositories list (in the Panaroma control) through to the details views (which are separate XAML pages). The Application Frame allowed me to quickly implement a smooth animation that fit in with the Windows Phone UI perfectly.
Previous to the Telerik controls the apps I had built transitioned in a very rough manner (see Zen Cart Mobile Manager v1.00 and v1.10) simply tossing the old view out and the new one on-screen.
So, the Telerik controls improved the UI of the app, smoothed out the implementation of screen transitions, and were simple and straightforward to use. I didn’t push the controls too heavily and only used two from the pack but I’d happily try out the rest of the package – on an app that requires the functions. For now, I’m really happy with the toolset and look forward to exploring it further.