Introduction

At //build 2014 we introduced the ability to build universal Windows Apps, which are able to share a large amount of code between Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 projects. In particular, three sessions at //build discussed the important features for developers working with XAML:

• What about XAML UI and Controls? by Shawn Oster
• Quality and Performance for XAML Apps by Stefan Wick
• Animations in Windows Phone XAML Apps by Kunal Deep Singh and Rohan Thakkar

To follow up from those talks, we wanted to share with you the Golflink sample app used for our demos and use it as a basis to share a number of tips and tricks for working with XAML controls in universal apps. 

Most of the functionality demonstrated is on Players.xaml and HubPage.xaml

Building the Sample

Ensure you have a Windows Phone 8.1 SDK. Download the project, unzip and build.

Description

From the shared code you will be able to learn about all of the broad areas outlined below - 

• Sharing resources and XAML across Windows Phone and Windows projects in Universal Apps:
  • Sharing common pages
  • Sharing UserControls
  • Sharing styles
  • Window based width adaption
  • Revisiting goodness of layout primitives (Grid/StackPanel)
  • ViewBox
  • VisualStateManager
  • Testing, testing, testing…
• Control that are common between Windows and Windows Phone but have different interaction behaviors:
  • Hub
  • SemanticZoom/ListView/GridView
  • DatePicker/TimePicker
  • ComboBox
  • MenuFlyout
• XAML Controls that are exclusive to Windows Phone 8.1:
  • New properties for ListView/GridView – Converters/ReorderMode
  • Pivot
  • StatusBar and margins on page headers
  • ContentDialog
  • AutoSuggestBox
  • ListPickerFlyout
  • Animations

For more background on XAML basics, refer to Create your first Windows Runtime app using C# or Visual Basic, Creating a UI (XAML), and Developing apps (XAML) in the documentation.