User interface for Windows Phone 8

[ This article is for Windows Phone 8 developers. If you’re developing for Windows 10, see the latest documentation. ]

In this section you can learn how to design the best UI for your Windows Phone app.

Layout

Creating a layout for your Windows Phone app includes the process of sizing and positioning objects in your app. To position objects, you must put them in container panels such as Canvas, StackPanel, and Grid. The topics in this section cover the Windows Phone layout system, screen orientation, and multi-resolution app development. This section contains the following topics.

Controls

Almost every Windows Phone app needs controls such as Button, TextBox and TextBlock. Windows Phone provides a rich assortment of controls that you can use to create the UI for your app. This section contains the following topics.

Themes

A theme is a set of resources you use to personalize the visual elements on a Windows Phone. You can create apps that preserve the look and feel of the native device UI from a style standpoint. These style properties include background colors and accent colors. A theme ensures that the controls and UI elements appear consistently across the phone. This section contains the following topics.

Text and fonts

Windows Phone provides several elements for rendering text, in addition to a set of properties for creating a variety of formatted text. This section contains the following topics.

App bar

You can create an app bar to provide users with quick access to an app’s most common tasks. By using the Windows Phone app bar, you help create a consistent UI across all apps on the device. This section contains the following topics.

Speech

New in Windows Phone 8, users can interact with your app by using their voice. The types of voice interaction include voice commands, speech recognition, and speech synthesis (text-to-speech). For more info about speech support, see Speech for Windows Phone 8.

See Also

Other Resources

How to create a splash screen for Windows Phone

How to create a data binding for Windows Phone