This article is the second in a series which discusses some of the things that I learned while developing my first Windows Phone 7 application.
One thing I wanted to do in my WP7 app was to provide a nice splash screen that displayed for a couple of seconds before the main page displayed. I noticed that the application includes the image SplashScreenImage.jpg which I changed to be what I wanted, but this image did not display consistently.
I found some helpful links about this issue that I used to craft my solution. Here they are:
I modeled my solution after Allen Newton's with some minor tweaks. Here are my steps.
- In my initial page, MainPage.xaml, I added a StackPanel which contains an Image tag to my SplashScreenImage.jpg. Notice the visibility is set to "Visible"
<StackPanel Name="spSplashScreen" Visibility="Visible">
<Image x:Name="imageSplashScreen"
Source="/MyApp;component/SplashScreenImage.jpg"
Stretch="Fill" />
</StackPanel>
- The remainder of my content on the page is included in a Pivot Control, called pivotMain. Its visibility is set to "Collapsed".
- I included a DispatcherTimer control to set a specific time span to display the splash image. I initialize this in the Loaded event of the page. The timer is set with an interval of 3 seconds.
System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherTimer _splashTimer;
public MainPage()
{
InitializeComponent();
_splashTimer = new System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherTimer();
this.Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(MainPage_Loaded);
}
private void MainPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
if (_splashTimer != null)
{
_splashTimer.Interval = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 3);
_splashTimer.Tick += new EventHandler(_splashTimer_Tick);
_splashTimer.Start();
}
else
{
if (pivotMain.SelectedIndex == 0)
{
appbarMain.IsVisible = true;
}
}
} - The code to handle the Tick event will hide the Splash image and display the Pivot control. Notice that the I am setting the DispatcherTimer object = null so we don't launch the splash page again.
void _splashTimer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
_splashTimer.Stop();
_splashTimer.Tick -= new EventHandler(_splashTimer_Tick);
_splashTimer = null;
spSplashScreen.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
pivotMain.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;
}
That's it! For me this technique worked well with my Pivot app. I hope that you find it helpful as well. Enjoy!