WP7PUBLISH: fast way to deliver content to Windows Phone 7

Developing applications for mobile devices for many may not seem so difficult. In principle, we can agree with this statement, but with one “but”: to develop at the same time a functional, beautiful, and most importantly, convenient application is extremely difficult. The article would like to talk about the difficulties in developing mobile applications and how with the help of the engine developed by us WP7PUBLISH you can save time writing applications for Windows Phone.

Introduction

Writing a simple RSS reader can make steel an easy task even for a student, but developing a convenient content delivery system is a much more difficult task.

What you need to remember when writing mobile applications:

• A mobile application is not a desktop or web application, so you can’t apply all the usual rules. It must be remembered that the smartphone is not a full-fledged computer, so the issues of performance and convenience come out on top.
• the user may not always have an Internet connection, and the tariffs for the mobile Internet are generally not democratic;
• It is necessary to provide the user with a convenient means of feedback in case your application contains shortcomings, or the user has a great idea for improving your product (which is 99% of cases);
• You need to think about collecting statistics on the use of your product: on how many times the application has been downloaded to how much the user spends on average on your product;
• You should update your application, and also should provide a convenient and painless (for the user) migration to a newer version;
• the user must receive feedback from those controls with which he interacts - he must clearly see that he performs exactly the actions that he planned;
• the application should be easily localized to different languages;
• also an important point is compliance with the guidelines for the platforms for which mobile applications are developed.

The well-known 80/20 rule also applies to mobile development: 20% of the time is spent writing 80% of the functionality, but stabilization of the application may well take 80% of the total time.
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Content Is King!

Content is known to be king (Bill Gates, 1996). Despite the fact that the readers on the new platforms appear among the first, truly convenient tools for content delivery can be counted on the fingers. Therefore, we decided to create WP7PUBLISH, which allows you to work with various data sources and quickly create high-quality content applications.

What is WP7PUBLISH?

WP7PUBLISH is an engine for fast and high-quality development of content delivery systems to the end user.

Key features of WP7PUBLISH:

• WP7PUBLISH is designed using the MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) pattern to separate application logic and its presentation. Thus, if you want to use your own page design or styles, then absolutely no need to go into the program code - just change the xaml pages you need;
• WP7PUBLISH does not use the WebBrowser component to display text, but renders HTML using native controls, which allows not only to consume information, but also to enjoy reading. Most of the applications display a list of news and when you switch to them, they open the news in a web browser (either built into the application or external). This option is, in essence, a wrapper over a web application and cannot be considered a full-fledged content provider.
• convenient settings management, as well as versioning support. Settings - an integral part of the application, allowing users to customize the application "by itself". It is clear that the settings may vary depending on the type of application. In WP7PUBLISH we have unified the work with the settings, which makes it easy to modify them even with the next updates.
• support offline work. All content is cached locally and available even when there is no Internet connection. This allows you to use the application without waiting for the download of new data, and, for example, on the road or on the train, where there is no Internet connection.
• use of resources, which makes it easy to localize applications in various languages;
• animation when interacting with controls;
• optimization of content download from the web, which has a positive effect on application performance;
• Strict adherence to the Metro style, so that the user receives the highest quality UX when working with the application.

WP7PUBLISH can work with multiple data sources:

• RSS;
• twitter feeds - by keyword, hashtag or profile;
• Youtube video by keywords;
• any structured data sources in the format: JSON, XML.

An example of an application created on the basis of WP7PUBLISH ( Zadolbali is a client for popular networks bash.org.ru, zadolbali, sham.net, IT Happens, etc.):





An example of the not yet released News -Client application for popular news resources:





In addition, we have already collected a lot of feedbacks and promptly add new features, for example, displaying a contact not for a specific tape, but for a specific resource:



As you can see, applications perform the main function - content delivery, and, despite the same appearance, are easily customized for a specific site or subject.

Other examples can be found here .

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To promote WP7PUBLISH, we offer the following action: everyone can send a request to info [at] devrain.com, in which you can specify your website or the content application's content with specific links and keywords, and for all ideas we like, we will develop and publish applications with using WP7PUBLISH is completely free.