Is there a way of finding out what would my orientation have been? - windows-phone-7

Question

I'm currently writing a portrait only app, but I have a customer requirement that they'd like to implement a special feature if the phone is turned on its side.
To be clear they don't want the page to change orientation - so keeping the page as portrait works well here - but they do want to be able to detect the sideways change.
Is there anyway of finding this out (e.g. from rootframe or from some other object?) or do I have to access the Accelerometer data and work it out myself?
To be clear on this...
I'm trying to keep the page in portrait at all times.
and if I specify SupportedOrientations="portraitorlandscape" then keeping the page in portrait seems to be hard (correct me if I'm wrong, but it just doesn't seem to want to stay in portrait - the MS SDK is too good at making the page go landscape)
and if I don't specify SupportedOrientations="portraitorlandscape" then I don't get calls to OnOrientationChanged in either the page or the RootFrame
And as the icing on the cake... I need the phone to stay in portrait mode too - I need the SystemTray to stay at the top of the screen (the portrait top).

Answer 1

You can handle the OnOrientationChanged event which will return a PageOrientation enumeration.
Accepting this because of the comments:
#Stuart - You may find the Orientation Helper class in this starter kit useful. It uses the accelerometer, so I guess you'll have to use that, but it might save you time rolling out your own version: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg442298%28VS.92%29.aspx#Customizing_Behavior

Answer 2

This might help, but for a case when arriving to this particular page, not for the initial page - so only partly answering the question. It trigs the OnOrientationChanged although no change has been done! (Figured out this solution after having tried to find a solution for two days) :
On the particular page, write in . xaml code
Orientation="None"
On the .xaml.cs side, write under
InitializeComponent();
Orientation = this.Orientation;
this.OrientationChanged += new EventHandler<OrientationChangedEventArgs>
(OnOrientationChanged);
and separately
void OnOrientationChanged(object sender, OrientationChangedEventArgs e)
{
if ((e.Orientation & PageOrientation.Landscape) != 0)
{
MyImage.Height = 480; //for example
}
{
MyImage.Width = 480; // for example
}
}
In my case, I placed the image as follows:
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="*" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<StackPanel>
<Image x:Name="MyImage"/>
</StackPanel>
.. followed by other code, still loading during which time picture is shown ...
This decreases the size of the image when in Landscape mode when entering the page!
Got the solution, finally, after having seen Jeff Prosises site

Answer 3

Detect orientation change:
http://alan.beech.me.uk/2011/04/19/detecting-orientation-change-wp7dev/

Answer 4

I had to do a similar thing in one of my apps before where an image that is used as the background doesnt rotate but other items on the page do.
The code looks a bit like this:
protected override void OnOrientationChanged(OrientationChangedEventArgs e)
{
// Keep the image in the same position as in portrait
// But still allows other controls to rotate when orientation changes.
switch (e.Orientation)
{
case PageOrientation.LandscapeRight:
ForegroundImage.RenderTransform = new CompositeTransform { Rotation = 90 };
ForegroundImage.RenderTransformOrigin = new Point(0.5, 0.5);
ForegroundImage.Margin = new Thickness(158.592, -158.792, 158.592, -160.558);
break;
case PageOrientation.LandscapeLeft:
ForegroundImage.RenderTransform = new CompositeTransform { Rotation = 270 };
ForegroundImage.RenderTransformOrigin = new Point(0.5, 0.5);
ForegroundImage.Margin = new Thickness(158.592, -158.792, 158.592, -160.558);
break;
default: // case PageOrientation.PortraitUp:
ForegroundImage.RenderTransform = null;
ForegroundImage.RenderTransformOrigin = new Point(0, 0);
ForegroundImage.Margin = new Thickness();
break;
}
base.OnOrientationChanged(e);
}
Unfortunately there's no real work around for the system tray or app bar. For the system tray you could hide this though and then only show it (for a period of time) when the user taps or swipes near that part of the screen.