Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Taking a look at the Mindscape Phone Elements for WP7.

by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 3/8/2011 12:56:46 PM

I recently heard that Mindscape HQ had released the Windows Phone 7 Controls and had to take a look at them.

100 FREE LICENSE GIVEAWAY!

Before we get to the screenshots, you will be pleased to learn that my usergroup called “Allaboutxaml” has partnered with Mindscape HQ and are giving away 100 license. You can check out the site here to get your free controls. But please hurry as after the 100 are gone then I will not have any more to give away!

A few links to read first:

• The official blog post from Mindscape HQ detailing the release. They also have the links to download the trial and get started.
• The phone elements official forum!

So, let’s get started. After you download the controls go ahead and double click the .exe to get started installing them.

After everything is installed then you will have the following program group.

I’d recommend clicking on the Phone Elements Directory to get started:

Let’s go over each element:

1. Bin – Just the .DLL that’s required to use Mindscape HQ WP7 Controls in your project.
2. Documentation – a .CHM File that will show you how to get your project up and running quickly.
3. Resources – Just a few image files
4. Samples – This is a full WP7 project that details every controls.

The thing that I was most interested in was how the controls look and is it easy to use. I always believed if your paying for controls then you should hold my hand through using them. You will be pleased to know that Mindscape made it very easy to use.

First, the WP7 project in the “Samples” folder just works. Double click on the solution file and you are in an emulator looking at the controls.

Since you have the source code for every control, it’s a matter of copying/pasting the code in your project to get it to work.

What I did, was play with the controls in the emulator until I found one I could use. Then I looked at the Visual Studio solution and found the Page that contained the control. Mindscape makes this very easy to do with their layout:

So, the one that I was interested in was the Looping List Box.  Here is a demo of it:

I wanted to see how they were populating the numbers 1-100 so I found the code behind and noticed it was just this one line.

LoopingListBox1.DataSource = new NumericDataSource() { MinValue = 1, MaxValue = 100 };

In case you are wondering, the NumericDataSource was created by MindScape and you can view the Declaration to find out more about it:

So, the controls are pretty much that easy to use.

1. Play with the emulator and find the control you want to use.
2. Find the XAML file in the Sample Solution and copy/paste the code.

Let’s go ahead and take a look at the controls available:

They also have a great variety of Charting controls:

Overall it’s a nice set of WP7 controls. Feel free to leave a comment below on anything you would like to see and I will make sure that Mindscape HQ get the message. Don’t forget if you are the first 100 people reading this article then you will get a free license.