The Windows Phone 7 supports 2 orientations Landscape and Portrait , which means that the combination of these 2 orientation can lead to different chances .
- None
- Portrait
- Lanscape
- PortraitUp
- PortraitDown
- LanscapeLeft
- 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