My First Windows Phone App


So every year at work, we assign ourselves some goals to achieve to hopefully help us grow and expand our knowledge base.  This year one of my goals was to develop a smartphone app which is something I have never even attempted.  I think it is always good to push yourself a little out of your comfort zone from time to time, and from a development perspective, this was exactly that.  I was not even sure where to begin.

There are so many phone operating systems to choose to develop for, including Android, iOS, Blackberry and Windows Phone.  I did a little research on what platform I should tackle, and ultimately chose Windows Phone because I knew from observing other developers here at Waggener Edstrom that I could download all the software I needed to get started for free.  So I went and downloaded Visual Studio, and the Windows Phone Emulator and got started.

Now what should I develop I thought to myself.  Well, www.waggeneredstrom.com has lots of RSS feeds on their blogs, press releases, and such so I decided to make a news application for my organization.  This is nothing ground breaking or revolutionary, but would be a good first challenge for me making a smartphone application.  Looking online, I found lots of resources that helped outline what needed to be done to pull in an RSS feed.

After a couple weeks of tinkering around with this in my spare time, I was able to successfully create the app, and pull in the feeds.  I was so excited once I finally got the feed working, and the app functioning the way I wanted!  I am still working on the design, and have a few ideas after talking with a few people that I want to go back in and polish up some things, so this is not a finished product but I had to share.

Here are a few screenshots of how it works.

Home Screen

Press Release Page

Blog Post Page

Please let me know what you think. I would love to hear any feedback you have! I will post final screenshots once I am done polishing it up.

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