Orientation in Windows Phone 7

There are two properties in your Page.xaml file that control your project's orientation:

SupportedOrientations="Portrait" Orientation="Portrait"

You can set your SupportedOrientations to one of three values:

• Portrait (the default)
  
• Landscape
  
• PortraitOrLandscape

The Orientation values is what you want your application to use when it starts:

• Landscape
  
• LandscapeLeft (tip the phone left)
  
• LandscapeRight (tip the phone right)
  
• Portrait
  
• PortraitDown (normal vertical position)
  
• PortraitUp (tip the phone upside-down)

Change the appearance of you application when the orientation of your application is changed.

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Here’s the code on the 31 Days of Windows Phone | Day #4: Device Orientation the author uses to make the title bar disappear and reappear (this is part of the contents of MainPage.xaml.cs file):

// Constructor

public MainPage()

{

    InitializeComponent();

    this.OrientationChanged +=

         new EventHandler<OrientationChangedEventArgs>(MainPage_OrientationChanged);

}

void MainPage_OrientationChanged(object sender, OrientationChangedEventArgs e)

{

    if ((e.Orientation == PageOrientation.LandscapeRight)

      ||(e.Orientation == PageOrientation.LandscapeLeft))

    {

        TitlePanel.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;

    }

    else if ((e.Orientation == PageOrientation.PortraitDown)

          || (e.Orientation == PageOrientation.PortraitUp))

    {

        TitlePanel.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;

    }

}

Because I only care that my application is Landscape or Portrait (and not one of the more specific orientations), I am checking for both states, and adjusting my interface accordingly.  You could certainly break out the individual cases seperately, and make your interface look differently for each.

You’ll notice that I created an event handler for the OrientationChanged event.  This is certainly the simplest way to recognize when this happens, but you could always use the Accelerometer if you prefer.

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