Picture Gallery for
Windows Phone
Your guide on how to build an
Image Browser app. Download Source Code
Products > Windows Phone Controls > Getting Started > Picture Gallery App
Want to Learn How to Build Windows Phone Apps?
The Telerik Picture Gallery sample app is a valuable learning resource for Windows Phone app development. Built by Telerik Windows Phone team, it contains a complete set of directions on how to use the Telerik Design Templates and other Telerik Windows Phone controls to achieve stunning UI and how to consume the Flickr API among many other tips.
This is a complete sample application with source code available. It is free to download, review, modify or reuse. Moreover, it is a Picture Gallery app that demonstrates how to create a native Windows Phone client for Flickr or another image service. The app is designed so that it can be easily extended to support more web services.
Below you will find the full set of information resources, such as app architecture, controls used, and ways of handling possible error conditions.
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Architecture - Creating the Wireframes
The Telerik Picture Gallery app is built around the MVVM pattern that is so popular with XAML based Windows Phone applications. As the pattern suggests, the app is separated into models – view models and views.
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The views are the pages, user controls, etc. basically, everything XAML, while the models are the objects with which the specific web service works. Assuming the image service has a certain framework of functionalities, we can finally begin. For a detailed description of Picture Gallery’s architecture, read this blog post.
How to Pass Information Between Pages and Save Favorites
If you are wondering what is the best mechanism for passing information between pages, and more important, a mechanism that would allow your users to close the app without losing any of their settings, here is the answer for you: PhoneApplicationService’s State dictionary.
Having a pretty picture browser, you should think of a “Favorites” section. The problematic part is how to save our favorite view models and how to load them later on. Good thing that the Windows Phone environment gave the world DataContractSerializer.
Read the blogpost Exceptions, Errors and How to Handle Them
No application is complete without proper error handling. To provide your app users with an ultimate experience, you have to predict possible exceptions and how to deal with them. In the case of Windows Phone Picture Gallery app, few situations can be expected – lack of internet connection availability or the occurrence of individual exceptions by the image service API.
Another point to remember is that no matter how many times you tested the app, unexpected errors may still surprise you. In situations like this one, you should rely on Telerik Diagnostics for Windows Phone. The control gives you information that your end-users surely cannot provide you with, such as stack-traces, memory dumps and more.
Read the blogpost Telerik Windows Phone Controls to the Rescue
Telerik Picture Gallery app is developed with Telerik Windows Phone UI Controls.
The DataBoundListBox and its data virtualization feature are priceless for keeping the app’s source code clean. Thanks to it, your end-users can navigate through thousands of items without ever slowing down the application.
Our BusyIndicator providing a vast amount of "busy" animations, is used in literally every view because there are many pictures that need to be loaded.
Other controls used are ConversationView, Design Templates, SlideView and more.
