Windows Phone: Package.appxmanifest

Introduction

Welcome again! Today I'll talk about Windows Phone “Package.appxmanifest”. It's really very important to make your app fully complete. Because simply designing and writing lots of code doesn't make a good app, the look of the app must be very attractive. Look and feel is very important to attract a customer. Moreover, not only the look but also the capabilities and dependencies of the app must be set in the “Package.appxmanifest”.

Exploring Package.appxmanifest

So let's explore the Windows Phone “Package.appxmanifest”. Just open the “Package.appxmanifest” from your “Solution Explorer”, and you can see the similar picture below.


                                                                           Figure 1

I've used my previous example of Windows Phone XAML Styling here. You can use any of the existing applications or just create a new one.

Changing Application Title

If you have a look at the picture, “Display name” and “Description” have that same content “XAMLStyling”. Yes, it's our app name, the same as what we gave before. But does it look good, when we run the application?



The answer is obviously “No”. So we just need a little bit of work. Just provide a space between “XAML” and “Style”, so it'll be “XAML Style”.


                                                                        Figure 3

One more thing we need to do is, switch to the “Visual Assets” tab and check the “Check Box” below “Title”.


                                                                     Figure 4

After that you'll get some good visualization of your app's tiles.



Changing Application Logo

The very important thing is to change the application logo. It's your app's unique identity. So, select the list item one by one and change your logo. But before that you need to upload your logo to your project solution. To do that, right-click on the project and add a new folder. Give it the name “Images”. Right-click on the folder and click Add >> Existing Item.


                                                                  Figure 6

Upload all the required logos of the corresponding resolution.


                                    Figure 7

Now, locate all the logos in the “Visual Assets” section.


                                                                        Figure 8

Format of Logo

The logo must be in “png” format and if it's transparent then it'll be better for visualizing some information. Locate all these logos one by one. After you've changed the logos, save it. If you run the application, it'll look like this.



Other options

Well, we've done some major modification of our application. There're some other parts like “Requirements”.


                                                                     Figure 10

If you use the sensors and camera API then you need to check the option you've used in your application.

One more thing is “Capabilities”.


                                                                        Figure 11

If you use a microphone, location service, internet, proximity or any other things, you need to check these options as well. Otherwise your application will not work.

There're some other options like “Declaration”, “Content URls” and “Packaging”. You can also change these things as well. I've shown the common things here.

Summary

So, that's it. I hope you now have an understanding of the Windows Phone “package.appxmanifest”. Keep digging with Visual Studio and try to learn new things everyday. I'll be here with a new topic soon. Until then good bye. Have a nice day.

Happy coding!

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