The Application Bar in Windows Phone is commonly called as AppBar provides the users with easy and quick access to the Windows Phone app’s common functionalities.

The Application Bar is a row that contains icon buttons and ellipsis . When the user taps on the ellipsis , the menu items(if enabled) are shown. The menu items are the text based menu items that are displayed in a list when the ellipsis is tapped.

How to Create ApplicationBar using XAML ?

One of the quickest way to create Application Bar in Windows Phone is using XAML or XAML Designer.

Follow the below steps to create Application Bar using XAML.

1. In Visual Studio 2012 , Open your Windows Phone Page in the Designer to view the XAML code.

2. In the Windows Phone page (Eg : MainPage.xaml) , add the following code to create an ApplicationBar with 2 IconButtons and one menu item.

<phone:PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar>
  <shell:ApplicationBar>
    <shell:ApplicationBar.MenuItems>
      <shell:ApplicationBarMenuItem IsEnabled="True" Text="About Us" Click="ApplicationBarIconButton_Click_1"/>
    </shell:ApplicationBar.MenuItems>
    <shell:ApplicationBarIconButton IconUri="/Assets/edit.png" IsEnabled="True" Text="Edit"/>
    <shell:ApplicationBarIconButton IconUri="/Assets/cancel.png" IsEnabled="True" Text="Cancel" />
  </shell:ApplicationBar>
</phone:PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar>

The tag ApplicationBarMenuItem which is used to create an menu item . The ApplicationBarIconButton tag is used to create the IconButton . The IconUri is used to set the path to the image for the icon .

3. Add the event handler to the code behind page for the ApplicationBarMenuItem as shown below.

namespace MobileOSGeekOxygeneTutorial;

interface

uses
  System,
  Microsoft.Phone.Controls,
  Microsoft.Phone.Shell,
  Microsoft.Phone.Tasks;
type
  MainPage = public partial class(PhoneApplicationPage)

  public
    // Constructor
    constructor ;
  private
      method ApplicationBarIconButton_Click_1(sender: Object; e: System.EventArgs);
  end;
type
  Employee = public class
  public
    property Name: System.String;
    property Designation: System.String;
  end;
implementation

constructor MainPage;
begin
  InitializeComponent();

end;

method MainPage.ApplicationBarIconButton_Click_1(sender: Object; e: System.EventArgs);
begin
    System.Windows.MessageBox.Show("Welcome to developerpublish.com");
end;
end.

4. Build and run the windows phone application in the Windows Phone Emulator. You should see the ApplicationBar that was added in the page.

Download the sample sourcecode on applicationbar in Windows Phone 8 using Oxygene here.