Chapter 7. Integrating with the Pictures and Music + Videos Hubs
This chapter covers
Windows Phone contains several built-in applications, including the phone dialer, email, camera, Bing search, the Pictures Hub, and the Music + Videos Hub. In chapters 4 and 6 you learned how to use launchers and choosers and the PhotoCamera class to interact with the built-in applications. Most of these interactions consisted of sample applications launching the built-in applications. In this chapter you’re going to learn how to make the Pictures Hub and the Music + Videos Hub launch your application.
The built-in applications use deep link navigation URLs to launch your application and pass information. The Pictures Hub uses a feature known as App Connect to display a list of applications in the hub panorama, as well as in various menus displayed throughout the hub. When viewing a picture, the user can choose to share or view the picture with your application. In this chapter you’re going to extend the PhotoEditor sample application from chapter 6 to leverage App Connect for Windows Phone. Along the way you’ll learn to use the MediaLibrary from the XNA Framework to read and write pictures to the phone’s picture albums.