Announcing the Official WPCentral app for Windows Phone 7

[Jay Bennett]

It's just the white circle with WP in the midle and WPCentral text underneath. What is strange is that being supposedly transparent, it has a gradient background.

Yeah your device hasn't pulled down the live tile just yet, glad to know that mystery is solved!

The SDK allows me to use a scheduled pull tile so it won't refresh until the OS kicks off your hourly tile refresh. It should happen about an hour after the last time you used the app, but I have seen the OS get a bit confused and take a bit longer (can I suggest doing a full turn off/on then get back to me in a couple of hours )

 

[TheWeeBear]

Ah i see, OK Jay, thanks will do.

 

[TheWeeBear]

All is well Jay, live tile just updated.

 

[furygoalbrtis39]

How do you access settings in the app?

And i bought the Paid version, looks great

 

[Jay Bennett]

How do you access settings in the app?

And i bought the Paid version, looks great

This is actually a very common request. I had hoped that by keeping everything seamless (i.e. setting up Twitter only when you need it) we wouldn't need a settings screen. However the community has spoken and I'm working on one now. Expect v1.2 to have a settings icon next the the refresh icon on the homescreen.

Actually whilst I'm here guys, these settings will be included:

Twitter credentials
Haptic feedback options(both on buttons and for refresh)
Live tile enable/disable

One request I've had, which could take me some time to implement, depending on how I did it, would be to disable the backgrounds and instead use a plain black background (plain black would be simple but to have it change according to light/dark theme would take longer). What's everyone's thought here, would you use this feature?

I'm also aware of the request to be able to increase the font size, I wanted to try doing this with a pinch-to-zoom method but could do it quicker if it was a setting in the page. Again, I'd welcome user feedback here.

 

[TheWeeBear]

Needless to say that's the first thing i'd do, turn off the backgrounds if it was available to me. ;o)

 

[furygoalbrtis39]

My tile won't update, I've given it 7 hours

Sent from my Samsung Focus using Board Express

 

[Jay Bennett]

My tile won't update, I've given it 7 hours

Sent from my Samsung Focus using Board Express

Fury, have you completely turned off then turned back on the phone? I apologise that this is the only suggestion I can give you, but when using the 'Pull' style live tile this is how WP7 schedules tile updates.

We will be looking at using a Push style tile in the future at some point, but it will be a few revisions from now.

 

[1jaxstate1]

Ok after I woke up this morning. The tile is now th same color as my custom theme color and the tile now displays the "ahhhhhh yeeaaaah" pic. Nice!

Sent from my Samsung Focus using Board Express

 

[enahs555]

One request I've had, which could take me some time to implement, depending on how I did it, would be to disable the backgrounds and instead use a plain black background (plain black would be simple but to have it change according to light/dark theme would take longer). What's everyone's thought here, would you use this feature?

Not really sure why you think it is all that hard? It should take 2 min to add the code to change the background. Especially if you say it would be easy to make it black.

 

[Jay Bennett]

Its harder to make it follow the light or dark theme perfectly as an option because the foregrounds are all intentionally set to be white so they show up against the original backgrounds regardless of theme.

I have got the plain black background working no problems, you can see preview of it at my blog (link in my signature)

Sent from my Samsung Omnia 7 using Board Express

 

[enahs555]

Its harder to make it follow the light or dark theme perfectly as an option because the foregrounds are all intentionally set to be white so they show up against the original backgrounds regardless of theme.

Are the hard programed into the xaml files or in the C# code? Depending on which, there are some rather easy methods to handle it not using Visual Studio, usually.

 

[Jay Bennett]

Hard in the XAML, In a future version I'll write out some XAML styles that can just be applied in the settings, I'm trying to keep the C# logic required down where possible. For now there will be the all black look with a couple of bits using the accent colour

Sent from my Samsung Omnia 7 using Board Express

 

[enahs555]

Hard in the XAML, In a future version I'll write out some XAML styles that can just be applied in the settings, I'm trying to keep the C# logic required down where possible.

Then it should be pretty easy. Just copy and paste the XAML into a word editor. Use a liberal dash of find and replace (stepping through).

So, do a find for 'fill="white" ', and replace it with a binding property. You can step through and hit next, look quickly, and replace it, and then next again. If you know you want everything white to black, you can do a find/replace all. Then just paste it back into Visual Studio.

Then, just with a little c# code set the binding property based off what color you want (3 lines of code or so).

You might also have to do it with some "color" properties, but if you use a word editor it should be able to be done pretty easily.

 

[Jay Bennett]

Yep, all in progress, thanks for your suggestions! Unfortunate issue that our icons are also white, it's all in progress but themes are new ground so bear with me!

 

[1jaxstate1]

Live tile stopped working? Once it starts, should it always display some sort of image from WPCentral?

 

[TheWeeBear]

Live tile stopped working? Once it starts, should it always display some sort of image from WPCentral?

Ditto (Returned to original WP logo here)

 

[Dave Blake]

My live tile stuck on the same image for 2 days then changed on its own to the WP with the circle so I reset the phone (off then on again) about 5 hours ago and I am still displaying the WP circled. I will post up if that changes.

Dave

 

[foosball]

Speaking of live tile issues, Jay do you know if the whole issue with the live tiles clogging the registry was taken into consideration regarding this app? Specifically, is this app "safe" to use in terms of not creating multiple registry entries as Jimski has documented with other apps which end up destroying live tiles?

Sent from my HTC Arrive using Board Express

 

[TheWeeBear]

Jay just posted on his Twitter...

''For those wondering, your live tile is still working, there's just no story been published as live-tile worthy at this time''

So it seems the live tile reverts to the default after a certain time.