Blend 2012. How to Show Different Resoultions for Window 8 Phones? - windows-phone-7

Windows 8 phones now have 3 resolutions vs 1 resolution WP7 had. I am wondering when I am designing in Blend 2012 if it is possible to switch to these resolutions to see how things look?

There is a Device window (Window | Device), where you can set the resolution

Related

run Windows 8.1 app inside Windows 10 preview

When I run my Windows 8.1 app inside Windows 10 preview (build 10240 and also all prior versions) all controls are quite tiny.
Normally the screen has 1366x768 physical pixels (and a scaling factor of 1.0 was reported).
When running the Windows 8.1 app inside Windows 10, a logical resolution of 1645.783... x 925.301... is reported (and still a scaling factor of 1.0 is reported).
Windows 10 then seems to downscale the 1645.783... x 925.301 "pixels" to the 1366x768 physical pixels which leads in notably smaller controls (while more content is shown)
The "magic factor" is 1.2048... which is exactly 1.0 / 0.83.
I know that Windows 10 has new scaling plateus. But this all does not make sense at all. The artificial scaling has an akward factor. Actually, leaving 1366x768 (#1.0) would be perfect. I consider this as a serious bug.
What is Windows 10 doing?
(I could port my Win 8.1 app to Win 10 so that the scaling would be OK again, but I would like to wait some months till the tools are really ready)
In Windows 10 display scaling affects both desktop apps and Windows apps. In Windows 8 however, display scaling only affected desktop apps. Your issue might be linked to this. Check your display scaling in Settings > System > Display > "Change the size of text, apps and other items".

WP7 project on WP8

We wan't to support both platforms, because the code is 100% portable to Windows Phone 7 from our Windows Phone 8 project, but i have noticed a strange problem.
So to support both platforms we need to create WP7 project and it will be installable on WP8, but:
On small devices like WVGA, application looks normal, but when i open it on 720p it doesn't use 100% height.
Example:
What the hell? If i open the same xaml in WP8 project all works perfect.
P.S. Full design is rubber - no hardcode in pixels or %. How to fix it?
Unfortunately, this is not possible. The WP7 apps running on WP8 devices are constrained in a 480x800 container.
To take advantage of the 720p screen, you'll have to build a WP8 version of your app.
That's because the different screen sizes and screen ratios. WP8 can run WP7 Apps, but at certain resolutions it uses a black rectangle to avoid lengthening the screen.

Font is different in WP7 and WP8 project

this is quite a strange thing I've run into.
I've been developing Windows Phone Apps for over a year now, and even with the WP8 switch i never seen this before.
If i take my WP 7.1 app and upgrade it to WP 8 the font gets quite messed up, shown in the two screenshots below. (Both taken from my WP8 Lumia 620)
WP 7.1 Version -
WP 8 Version -
Quite strange indeed, the font used is "visitor1 TT1 BRK"
from http://www.dafont.com/visitor.font
The font is set as a BlendEmbeddedFont and used in XAML like this:
FontFamily="/TronRadio;component/Fonts/Fonts.zip#Visitor TT1 BRK"
Is it a .NET 4.5 thing that needs to be set or some other kind of problem?
It is the first time I've seen this problem, i have upgraded other apps with embedded fonts without running into this.
One note is that the font shows up fine in the Design Workplace (Visual Studio 2012 and Blend).
However on the Windows Phone 8 and Emulators the above problems shows.
Thanks
Why don't you select the font in Expression Blend and then Embed it separately for Windows Phone 7 and 8 apps. This might help.

top margin issue for windows phone 7 apps on windows phone 8

The windows phone 7 application which I developed using 7.1 SDK occupies the entire screen on wp7. But the same application when opened in Windows Phone 8 shows some extra margin on top because of which my app was not able use the space on top. Any idea how to fix this?
WP7 only supports only one resolution (480x800).
For 480x800 WP8 devices that's obviously fine.
For 1280x768 devices this scales fine as this is the same aspect ratio.
However 1280x720 devices have a different aspect ratio which leaves the black bars at the top of the screen.
The only way to fix this is to upgrade your project to WP8 using the WP8 SDK (whilst watching out for any subtle issues that may bring).

Error with Windows Phone Emulator

I am trying to get my windows phone development up and running again.
I am having serious issues with the emulator where it looks like this http://imgur.com/qM4uj
Here is my info. Running windows 8 on a computer with quad core proc and good video card.
Any ideas?
Thanks!
This page might help:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wptools/thread/5b659eea-9a4f-45ce-8418-b9097d586197/
Emulator Video appears corrupted running XNA or Silverlight + XNA
game. The emulator images included in Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 have a
compatability problem with some video cards or video card drivers. The
problem appears as corrupted display when using the XNA graphics
rendering engine in landscape orientation when system tray is visible.
To work around this problem: XNA games should either set the
orientation to portrait:
graphicsDeviceManager.SupportedOrientations = DisplayOrientation.Portrait;
-or- enable full screen mode:
graphicsDeviceManager.IsFullScreen = true;
Silverlight + XNA games which use landscape page orientation should
disable the system tray:
<phone:PhoneApplicationPage
SupportedOrientations="Landscape" Orientation="LandscapeLeft"
shell:SystemTray.IsVisible="False"

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