I am new to windows phone app dev. I want to know if there is any way to have a notification alive till the user checks it. I found that "toast notification" expires in 10 seconds irrespective of user checks it or not. And there is no way of finding out if a tile notification arrived or not. Is there any workaround? I want to have notifications that are similar to Android notifications which stay till user checks them.
Persistent on-screen notifications on Windows Phone are not possible, by intentional design. It's interesting to see how many users on Android disliked persistent notifications when applications started to interrupt and then disrupt the current foreground application experience.
The design philosophy is that they distract from the user experience and could be easily abused by applications.
The general Microsoft recommendation for the platform would be to use a combination of a notification, Live Tile (reference), and in application UI update.
In Android 4.3, the behavior was changed to highlight applications that were constantly running (interesting reference)
You can use "MessageBox.Show(String)".
Refer below for:
MSDN Doc
Example 1
Example 2
Related
Is there a way to know if the app is sent to background or brought to foreground. I don't mean Suspended and Resuming events.
For example, user leaves the app to check something on Facebook app for a min. And then return to back to my app. So suspention doesn't take effect on this scenario. Then how to know user is back to the app on app.cs level?
As stated in the MSDN documentation:
Your app doesn't receive an activation event when app visibility changes, because the app is still running. Windows simply switches to and from the app as necessary. If your app needs to do something when the user switches away and back, it can handle the visibilitychange event (for HTML) or Window.VisibilityChanged event (for XAML).
I'm exploring the end user experience for a beacon prototype but I'm struggling to find any end-user scenarios that involve the app becoming active / opening up on the screen when within range.
I can get the app to send a notification and this is the most likely experience on both Android and iOS but does anyone know if it is possible to get the app to open up?
It's unlikely that I'd want real customers to have their experience interfered with in this way, I think it's ok if the app is already running and is open but not if it's running but not open.
Thanks
On Android this is possible. The reference app for the Android Beacon Library demonstrates how to do exactly this.
On iOS, it is not possible due to OS security restrictions. See here for details. The best you can do is send a local notification to the user when the beacon is detected, then if the user gestures to it, bring up the app.
I am developing a windows phone app that uses users current location, I am making the app in 7 OS. My question is, Can I track the location in background, that is when the screen is locked?
I know this is a possibility in wp8 as it provides us with GeoLocator class, but can I achieve this in wp7? I am basically making a runtracker app hence I would like my app to track the location even when its in background, is it really feasible?
Your help is always appreciated!!
It is possible to keep the app running under lock screen, as it does, for example, Endomondo app.
Using Idle Detection, you can keep the app on, although screen is locked, and you can keep on tracking the location. Actually, it is not running in background, but in the foreground. Just the screen is locked. So, be careful not to drain user's battery.
You have to set the PhoneApplicationService.ApplicationIdleDetectionMode property to Disabled, for example in InitializePhoneApplication() method in App.xaml.cs:
PhoneApplicationService.Current.ApplicationIdleDetectionMode = IdleDetectionMode.Disabled;
Note that there are special certification requirements for this type of apps. Refer to section 6.3 (Apps running under a locked screen) of the following page:
Additional requirements for specific app types for Windows Phone
I got the same problem in one on my apps..
I don't think it' s feasible for wp7..
Bt if you want to do it with wp8 you can refer following link.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj681691%28v=vs.105%29.aspx
And to know about background supported and unsupported API's http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/hh202942%28v=vs.105%29.aspx/css
GeoCoordinateWatcher Class exists in WP7, but here is the documentation from MSDN -
This API, used for obtaining the geographic coordinates of the device,
is supported for use in background agents, but it uses a cached
location value instead of real-time data. The cached location value is
updated by the device every 15 minutes.
More Info : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/hh202962%28v=vs.105%29.aspx/css
Is it possible to create an app the runs in the background? If so is there any samples out there for this?
In Windows Phone OS 7.1 you can actually use Background Agents now to perform tasks in the background.
from MSDN:
Scheduled Tasks and background agents allow an application to execute
code in the background, even when the application is not running in
the foreground. The different types of Scheduled Tasks are designed
for different types of background processing scenarios and therefore
have different behaviors and constraints.
You can use a PeriodicTask or ResourceIntensiveTasks. Read more about it in the MSDN article above.
And here's some sample code for you to integrate background agents into your existing app.
Sample Code: Background Agents in Mango
An application in the foreground can continue to run when the phone screen is locked(not background but...) by setting the PhoneApplicationService.ApplicationIdleDetectionMode property. By setting up your application to run when the phone screen is locked, a user is able to access the application quickly upon unlock. However, when your application runs under a locked screen, it could consume power outside of the user's control. For this reason, your application must minimize power usage when running under a locked screen
At the moment there is no way to create application that runs in background.
True multitasking for 3rd party Windows Phone 7 apps will come as an OS upgrade later this year. However, unless the app has to absolutely run in the background (like Pandora etc.), we as developers share some responsibility in making our apps feel at home with the rest of the OS.
Windows Phone OS offers app developers chances to save state of their applications to give the end users the feeling that it never stopped running; this is essentially the same as in other mobile platforms. As your app is being deactivated/closed, you have the option to "Tombstone" your state so that your users can come back to just where they left with BackStack navigation or future launches. Channel 9 had a nice set of demos & labs around tombstoning, found here.
Hope this helps!
I'm a complete noob when it comes to WP7. From what I know of it, in WP7 you wouldn't be able to make an alarm clock app. As in, start app, set alarm for an hour from now, close app, app launches and rings alarm after an hour is up.
Is this not possible in WP7? Or is there some way of doing it that I'm not aware of? I have seen a workaround for a stopwatch using tombstoning, but that doesn't seem like it would work here.
With Windows Phone 7 [for 3rd party developers] it's not possible to write an application that runs in the background on the phone. (This was a deliberate decision with regards to maintaining performance and battery life - not a limitation of the OS which is fully multi-tasking.)
If you really want the user to be notified of something at a specific time, regardless of whether your application is running you'll need to have this monitored from a process on an external server and then send a [toast] notification to the user at the appropriate time.
Learn more about push notifications at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff402537(VS.92).aspx