Handling Orientation in Windows Phone 7

The Windows Phone 7 supports 2 orientations Landscape and Portrait , which means that the combination of these 2 orientation can lead to different chances .

1. None
2. Portrait
3. Lanscape
4. PortraitUp
5. PortraitDown
6. LanscapeLeft
7. Lanscape Right

Handling Orientation in Windows Phone 7

The users can just rotate the Windows Phone to move from one orientation to another for which the Application must provide the orientation support .

One can set the fixed orientation to Landscape , Portrait or both to the Windows Phone Application form by setting the page’s Supported Orientation in either XAML or code behind .

 private void PhoneApplicationPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
 {

            this.SupportedOrientations = SupportedPageOrientation.PortraitOrLandscape;

 }

<phone:PhoneApplicationPage
    x:Class="CookBook.MainPage"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:phone="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Phone"
    xmlns:shell="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Phone.Shell;assembly=Microsoft.Phone"
    xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
    xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
    mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="480" d:DesignHeight="768"
    FontFamily="{StaticResource PhoneFontFamilyNormal}"
     FontSize="{StaticResource PhoneFontSizeNormal}"
    Foreground="{StaticResource PhoneForegroundBrush}"
    SupportedOrientations="PortraitOrLandscape" Orientation="Portrait"
    shell:SystemTray.IsVisible="True" Loaded="PhoneApplicationPage_Loaded">

To detect the orientation changes in your form , you need to add en event handler OrientationCahnged to the PhoneApplicationPage .

 private void PhoneApplicationPage_OrientationChanged(object sender, OrientationChangedEventArgs e)
 {

            MessageBox.Show(this.Orientation.ToString());

 }

You can also override the base class method OnOrientationChanged inside this event handler .

The screenshot above shows LandScapeRight as the Orientation .

This is retreived from the Enum PageOrientation that is defined inside the namespace Microsoft.Phone.Controls

   private void PhoneApplicationPage_OrientationChanged(object sender, OrientationChangedEventArgs e)
   {

            PageOrientation orient = this.Orientation;

   }

    public enum PageOrientation
    {
        None = 0,
        Portrait = 1,
        Landscape = 2,      
        PortraitUp = 5,
        PortraitDown = 9,
        LandscapeLeft = 18,
        LandscapeRight = 34,
    }

The values here might sound somewhat strange but when you convert the values in to binary , you might find it interesting ..

Sometimes it is better to put the controls inside the ScrollViewer so that when in the land Scape mode , if the controls go beyond the form’s height , the user can scroll down to view the controls .

If you dont add the scrollbar , you might see that the controls that goes beyond the form height cannot be accessed .

You can find other approaches for handling the Page Orientation from the following websites

• How to: Handle Orientation Changes on Windows Phone
• Video : Make Windows Phone 7 Applications Support Orientation Changes?
• Strategies for dealing with Orientation Changes