How to intervene between app icon and Windows Phone system? - windows-phone-8

Everybody,
I'm new to Windows Phone programming and I have some questions.
Firstly, to explain, When I touch some app's icons like "Messaging", "Office", "Phone"... in the app's list, WP system will call to the storage area to run and show the app's content: Messaging - Show your massages
Office - run the Office app and show files
...etc...
And my demand is to write an app that can intervene between them, like this picture:
Number "1" is the app's icon, I will touch it.
Number "3" is the app's content that showed after I touch the app's icon
And now I want to work with the connection between "1" and "3", that's number "2".
Thanks

The simple answer is you can not. By this i mean, if you want to intervene the launch of an app other than yours, its not possible. No APIs for that and apps are protected.
But if you are talking about you app, that you are building, when the user touches the app icon and launch the app you have some events firing in between. You can use these events to do some work but you cannot access the actual start up process of the app and intervene in that.
You need to study up on Application Life-cycle and Application Activation and Deactivation. Also when loading a page in the app you also have some events like OnNavigatedTo, OnNavigatingFrom etc to handle navigation between pages.
BUT, What you want here is to intervene in the start up process of another app beside yours you can not do it. That capability is not there.

Related

Windows Phone App Policies

I'm trying to publish an app for Windows Phone 8.1 and 10 (Only Mobile),
I already published a lot of apps on the same account. This is the same of another already on the store with just a different icon (different customer, it's B to B) and name, but from the 16 of october the policy for the windows store changed and now my app is blocked with the following reason:
App Policies: 10.1 Inaccurate Representation
Your app and its associated metadata must accurately and clearly
reflect the source, functionality, and features of your app.
•All aspects of your app should accurately describe the functions,
features and any important limitations of your app, including required
or supported input devices. Your app may not use a name or icon
similar to that of other apps, and may not claim to be from a company,
government body, or other entity if you do not have permission to make
that representation.
•Your app must be fully functional and must provide appropriate
functionality for each targeted device family.
•Keywords may not exceed seven unique terms and should be relevant to
your app.
•Your app must have distinct and informative metadata and must provide
a valuable and quality user experience.
Locations: Metadata
Notes To Developer
The app's "pin to start", "app list", or "games hub" icon does not
accurately represent the app and/or is a default icon. The
"pin-to-start" tile submitted in the submission package, which is
different from the icon and tile images in the app metadata, must
uniquely represent the app so users can associate it with your app.
For information about icons and tiles in Windows apps, see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/hh202948(v=vs.105).aspx.
I searched on the internet but I didn't find anything useful for this problem and I don't get what are those "pin to start", "app list", and"games hub" they are talking about in the Note to Developers.
Anyone knows the solution?
Thanks in advice
Based on your description, it seems that you haven’t set the title images for your app. So I would like to suggest you to delete all of icons in your project and open Package.appxmanifest in Visual Studio and select the Visual Assets. Please make sure to replace all default titles with the correct size image that represents your app. And then you could need to create your app package and resubmit your app again.
By the way, if your project is UWP, you could use UWP Title Generator tool to generate correct size title quickly.
Update:
As your project is Windows Phone Silverlight 8.1, firstly, please prepare the correct size title, and then right-click Assets--choose Add--Existing item, you can choose the correct size title to replace the default title.
Then right-click Package.appxmanifest, choose open with--XML(Text)Editor, then you could need to make sure that the path of title is correct.
Finally, you may need to rebuild the project in order for the tile titles to show up properly.
Hope it is helpful to you.

How to write an app that does not open a window in Windows Phone

I want to write an app that just manipulates the content of it's own tile and then silently terminates.
How do I get rid of any default window and splash screen?
Thanks!
You cannot do this fully. Tapping the tile will always launch the app so there will always be a context switch even if it exits immediately.
The closest you can get is to write a Silverlight app and not include a SplashScreenImage.jpg file. When the app starts up immediately exit by calling Application.Terminate (Runtime apps always show their splash screens while loading, but splash screens are optional for Silverlight apps).
This isn't recommended and is likely to confuse your users. A better design would be to let the app launch and do something useful such as displaying more information about what is on the tile or letting the user know what changes are being made.
As Romasz says, this may not pass certification. See Windows and Windows Phone Store Policies for the certification requirements. I suspect an immediate exit with no reason given will appear as and be treated as an app crash.

Launch application automatically from a push notification on Windows Phone 8

I would like to launch an application using parameters provided from a push notification on Windows Phone 8.
The behaviour I wish to achieve is that as soon as the user receives the notification, the application will be launched with the parameters provided in the notification. I.e. seamlessly present the notification in a more user friendly way.
As far as I understood there are three push notification mechanisms. Toasts, Tiles and Raw.
None of them seems to be able to handle the wanted behaviour.
Toast: The message is shown even if the application hasn't been started. It does not start the application unless clicked on but seems to be closest to the target.
Tile: Message is shown if the application has been pinned. But they may be difficult to notice unless the tile is pinned fairly high on the start screen.
Raw: Works in more power states but requires the application to be running. This doesn't seem to be a match because I want the notification to be received when the application is not running. I couldn't find information about which application states where raw notifications are handled. I would prefer all.
Did I miss something in my research? If anyone has a hint of how to put an application in the foreground from a push notification (without user interaction) it would be greatly appreciated!
My first attempt was to trigger the application start using SMS but that seems to be a no go.
See my post Launch application automatically from an SMS on Windows Phone 8
You can not automatically launch an application on Windows Phone (and neither can you on iOS or Android). What you can do is provide a URI with the Push notification so the user is taken to a page with the needed information
you can not put an application in the foreground from background without user interaction.

How to build a windows phone 8 application like kid's corner?

I need help on how to build an app for windows 8 phone which is exactly similar to Kid's Corner application which is available with NOKIA LUMIA 520.
I registered with the App Studio of Microsoft and tried to create a simple application like album but as a nubee I am not aware of all fundamentals and so need a simple guide.
Here is what I want my application should do:
Once you launch it, you can not go back until you lock phone and unlock it using password. same way as Kid's Corner.
I want that the app user should be able to see videos and photos only which the app is allowed to access.
User should be able to Zoom photos and play pause videos and using touch-slide can view the next one.
User should not be able to delete any files.
Thanks for pointing me to the exact resource where I can find some things which are easy to understand and simple to do :) .
Thanks a lot!
EDIT:
Is it possible to get the source code of Kid's Zone/Corner application?
1. Once you launch it, you can not go back until you lock phone and unlock it using password. same way as Kid's Corner.
This is impossible to lock user into your app. User always can exit or suspend your app using hardware buttons, you just can handle back button tab, but user also can touch to startmenu button or can hold to backbutton.
And you cant get kid zone's source code, its part of Windows Phone OS.

Air as3 app: One App to house many Apps

I am wondering if it is possible to create a master app or suite or container (not sure what to call it) to house multpile apps? I am working in Flash using as3 and packaging as air.
I am working on creating multiple apps for a company and they would like to have an app that when you click on it, all of the apps the person has downloaded from the company would appear inside of it. Keeping all of that companies apps on your device in one location, easy to find. For example, the kindle app. It is one app on your device that when you click on it, it opens up and displays all of the books you have chosen to download. You click the book you want and it opens up. Any ideas?
I don't want to package all of the apps together because I want the person to be able to choose which apps they want to download. I have no clue where to start on this one.
Sorry if my explanation is kind of confusing but I appreciate any help. Keep in mind I am fairly new at this stuff. Thank you!
If your idea is to target iOS then no, you can't. Because it's not allowed to load extra code from anywhere else but the app's own directory so you have to package everything into one app. Android may be a different story though.