I have a Page in a Windows Phone class library. This page has an appbar. I would prefer everything this page needs to be included within the class library so the setup list for consumers of this page / assembly is minimal.
However, When I set ApplicationBar icons, they get added to the class library project under the folder 'icons' just like normal, they show up fine in Blend, but at runtime they are no where to be found!
When I put the icons in the Windows Phone Application project all is well. However this is not my desired scenario as it is additional configuration / setup by the application author to use my pages.
I tried using the resource pathing using /{AssemblyName};component/icons/{IconName} but of course the AppBar needs them to be of type "Content" not "Resource". So I am thinking this is impossible but I wanted to know if anybody out there figured out how to do this.
Sorry guys. I just figured it out. I changed the newly added icons from "Resource" to "Content" but I forgot to set "Copy if newer" so they weren't getting outputted to the Bin\Debug\icons folder of the windows Phone Application. something to keep an eye on I guess.
Related
While developing a project for Windows Phone 7, I'm adding an image control onto the Grid and using the following code in C# to set the image source:-
Uri nUri = new Uri("/TestImage.png", UriKind.Relative);
BitmapImage nBitmapImage = new BitmapImage(nUri);
FacebookImage.Source = nBitmapImage;
The problem is that whenever I use custom images, they do not show up when I build and run the app on the emulator. Whereas, if I change the image file name in the above code to one of the images that are included in the project by default (ApplicationIcon.png), the image shows up upon running. I would like to know if this is a problem with the code or with the custom image files I'm using. I'm ensuring that the images I'm creating are proper and have the same attributes as the images included by default.
Could someone please help me out with this.
Thanks.
Click on your custom picture in Visual Studio's Solution Explorer. Then, look at the property window (press F4 if it's closed), and at the "Build Action" line. It basically tells the compiler how to embed your file in the application. The build action of ApplicationIcon.png should be "Content", just set the same one for your custom pictures.
I have been trying to use some custom fonts within my WP7 app.
I followed the example as per http://www.jeffblankenburg.com/2010/10/24/31-days-of-windows-phone-day-24-embedding-fonts/ but in my project it simply will not pick up the custom font.
I have downloaded the sample project in this example and this one does work okay.
So, I have now used the same font used in there, and included in my project. I have ensured that the properties on the file are identical (Build Action = 'Content' and Copy To Output Directory = "Always")
I have used in my XAML in exactly the same way i.e.
FontFamily="Fonts/DigitalDream.ttf#Digital Dream" FontSize="24"
But to no avail. The custom font is just ignored. Is there something that I am missing, or a setting .. anything that would allow this to work in one project, but not another?
I have discovered that it will work if my XAML page is defined at the root level, i.e. immediately under the project, but in my case I have it in a 'Views' folder.
My understanding was that
FontFamily="/Fonts/DigitalDream.ttf#Digital Dream" FontSize="24"
should start at the root folder of the project?
thanks
Custom fonts can be a little tricky. I spent several hours once trying to embed an .otf font only to find that it just didn't seem to be doable.
You're on the right track, though. A .ttf font should be embedable. It's hard to get the right combination of paths and filenames to make the font work, though.
The easiest way I've found to handle some of these more difficult "magic string" type of situations in XAML is to let Expression Blend do the heavy lifting.
Here's a blog post about using Blend to embed fonts. The nice thing about using Blend is that it gives you some visual indications that things are set up correctly--i.e. you can see the font you want in the font selection menu. This is what finally clued me in on the .otf issue. I couldn't see the font in Blend.
And here's an example of a custom font that I've used in one of my apps:
<TextBlock Name="MyTextblock"
FontFamily="/MyAppName;component/fonts/Fonts.zip#Segoe UI Mono">
That's FontFamily URI is a pain to get right. I'm pretty sure that's your problem.
I was actually having the same problem. I followed everything to the dot and still I wasn't able to embed one particular font. So I created a new project and tried embedding the font there. Still no luck. I then tried embedding some other font. And lo and behold, as soon as I typed the FontFamily attribute, I could see that it had embedded. This was particularly odd since I didn't have to change any properties of the font.
I opened the project in Blend and clicked on the font property box to the right. It took a few seconds and then it embedded the font I was having problems with in the first place.
I'm starting my first PhoneGap project and am developing using Visual Studio and Windows Phone 7, although I intend on ultimately deploying to iOS and Symbian as well.
However, I'm stuck at Step 1. I have added an image to the www/images folder, and put the following code:
<img src="images/login-btn.png" width="103" height="42" style="margin-left:90px;" />
And I get:
It works fine when I preview it in IE9, but I don't have a Mac to test it on iOS yet.
It's worth noting that the JS files and CSS have loaded fine, it's just any image (whether referenced in CSS or an <img> tag) always comes up broken.
My guess would be the Build Action of your image file is incorrect.
According to http://wiki.phonegap.com/w/page/48672055/Getting%20Started%20with%20PhoneGap%20Windows%20Phone%207#4Reviewtheprojectstructure section 4. You should be setting the Build Action of your images etc to Content which simply copies them into the output project when it is built. They are probably currently set to Resource or None.
To change the Build Action right click a file and choose properties to go to the properties window if you do not already have it open. It is probably then the first property. Just click and choose the correct one.
I'm posting this to questions that I found while trying to find my answer to the same problem. The JS framework I use adds a url query to each image when in a debugging mode (in order to force browsers to reload image, instead of using cached). So, my image "image/background.jpg" would be accessed as "image/background.jpg?d=34342233". But, when running on PhoneGAP for Windows Phone, it won't recognize the image, and thus it shows up as broken. So, I had to turn off debugging for the framework I use, and suddenly the images showed up (still, don't forget to set the Build Action to "Content" as mentioned earlier).
I'm having a little trouble getting localized resources files to work on Windows Phone 7. Here's what I'm doing:
Create a resource file, say "Strings.resx" (Build Action: Compile)
Create a key, say "TestKey" with a default value of empty string
Add a English resource file in the same folder with a value of "some English string": Strings.en-us.resx (Build Action: Embedded Resource)
Add a Japanese resource file in the same folder with a value of "some Japanese string": Strings.ja-jp.resx (Build Action: Embedded Resource)
In my PC Silverlight, WPF Apps that works fine when I change the Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture. But in the phone I always seem to be getting the value that's in the Strings.resx file - an empty string.
I have tried using the designer generated code and wiring up the resource manager by hand and it does not seem to matter. Here's my code:
Type t = typeof(Strings);
_resourceManager = new ResourceManager(
t.Namespace + "." + t.Name,
t.Assembly);
_resourceManager.GetString("TestKey");
Tell me localized resources are supported on the phone... ;> What am I doing wrong? Thanks!
Update: Thanks Olivier for forwarding the link. I saw that as well but missed an important step. I didn't add the "SupportedCultures" node to my csproj. Made all the difference - hoping someone else doesn't loose two hours trying to figure this out like I did.
<SupportedCultures>de-DE;es-ES;</SupportedCultures>
Of course, localized resources are supported on the phone:
How to: Build a Localized Application for Windows Phone
I wrote a blog post that provides links to a bunch of Globalization / Localization guides for WP7. There is a Windows Phone 7 in 7 Training video that helped me understand the basics. After that it was simply a matter of learning how to do databinding:
The MSDN article shows you how to
setup the files and create the
LocalizedStrings class, but they then
assume that you know how to use that
class for data binding. Visual Studio
2010 and Silverlight handle data
binding differently than Winforms, and
it gets even more confusing since XAML
also has it’s own definition of
Resources that are different then the
.NET resources we just created.
Silverlight also uses the term
Resource to refer to files that use
the the Build Action of "Content”, as
these files get wrapped up into the
.XAP file similar to how files with
Build Action of "Resource” get
embedded into the .Dll assembly (ex:
loading an image from content or
resource files). I found that instead
of using the Text="{Binding
Path=resourceFile.resourceName,
Source={StaticResource
Localizedresources }}" XAML syntax it
was easier to use the following steps:
Open your primary XAML page (usually MainPage.xaml) in the Visual
Studio designer
Open the properties for the PhoneApplicationPage and set the
DataContext to be
Application.Resources –>
LocalizedStrings. NOTE: if you already
are using a DataContext object, then
you should integrate the
LocalizedStrings class into that
object so that it has localization
support.
Once the Page’s DataContext has been set you can change the data
binding for any control on the page by
simply selecting the property (ex:
text, checked, etc), selecting “Apply
Data Binding…”, and setting the Path
to Localizedresources.BtnText or
whatever the name of the desired
resource value is.
I've been working on a Windows Phone 7 app, and after a bit of Googling it seems that for images that I have added to the Visual Studio project, I need to set the build action to "Content" in order to be able to reference the images in my app.
However, the Windows Phone List Application project template includes an image (ArrowImg.png) that has its Build Action set to "Resource", and is still available to be referenced from the application.
I was wondering if anyone could confirm that we should definitely be using the Content build action, or whether there is some way to access images added to a project with the Resource Build Action as shown in the project sample, which we should be using instead?
If you set the action to "Content" the image is included "as-is" in the XAP.
If you set the action to "Resource" the image is embedded into a shared DLL.
In a lot of situations you can use either. There may be a performance, or other, issue with using one rather than another but I'm not aware of and have never noticed any.
For what it's worth, unless I need to specifically make it a resource, I use content.
With the current (Beta) tools, I have seen VS complain that images directly referenced in XAML should be set to "Resource" (if set to "Content") but the app works fine with either. Hopefully this is an issue which will be addressed in the RTM tools.
For more information see the discussion in What are the various "Build action" settings in Visual Studio project properties and what do they do?
Either build action is correct.
Also worth looking at when resolving issues relating to build action is the pathing you use.
I've seen a fair few people running into trouble with this because they assume they've set their build action inappropriately.
You can set the build action either way to suit your requirements of when to incur the load time cost, you just need to adjust the pathing to suit.
Some more info on the topic from this post.
Set source to image in C#
You can liken content to the lazy
loading version of resources.
The difference is you will incur the
performance hit of all resources when
the assemblies are loaded to start
your app.
Content, on the other hand, the
performance hit is deferred to when
you use it.
Which is more suitable will vary on a
case by case basis.
Note also that the pathing to
reference resources and content is
different as can see here.
//Uri uri = new Uri("/Resources/Images/MyImage.jpg", UriKind.Relative); // Content
Uri uri = new Uri("/PhoneApp;component/Resources/Images/MyImage.jpg", UriKind.Relative); // Resource
BitmapImage imgSource = new BitmapImage(uri);
image1.Source = imgSource;