Windows Phone 8 SDK New Features For Developers

I dug in the Windows Phone 8 object browser and I found some interesting classes:

Microsoft.Phone.Controls.WebBrowserExtensions

In WP7, there is only the GetCookies method.
In WP8, there are the new ClearCookiesAsync and ClearInternetCacheAsync methods.

Windows.Phone.Networking.NetworkOperators.SmsInterceptor

There is a event called SmsReceived which could be really interesting to use. However, there is a little note saying: “This API is not intended to be used directly from your code”.

Windows.UI.Input.EdgeGesture, Windows.Devices.Input.MouseCapabilities and Windows.Devices.Input.KeyboardCapabilities

They all seem interesting, but I was not able to instantiate them. I get this exception: Requested Windows Runtime type ‘Windows.Devices.Input.MouseCapabilities’ is not registered.

Windows.ApplicationModel.Store

This namespace contains a lot of cool classes:

• LicenseInformation (ExpirationDate, IsActive, IsTrial, ProductLicences).
• ListingInformation (AgeRating, CurrentMarket, Description, FormattedPrice, Name, ProductListings)
• ProductLicense (ExpirationDate, IsActive, IsConsumable, ProductId)
• ProductListing (Description, FormattedPrice, ImageUri, Keywords, Name, ProductId, ProductType, Tag)
• CurrentApp (GetAppReceiptAsync, LoadListingInformationAsync, LoadListingInformationByKeywordsAsync, RequestProductPurchageAsync)

I hope these classes will be available to use in applications. They could be useful in making marketplace apps!

Windows.System.Launcher

The Launcher class has LaunchFileAsync and LaunchUriAsync. The summary of LaunchUriAsync is: Starts the default app associated with the specified file or protocol.

I tried it with the protocol mailto:email@company.com and it launched the mail application! It will be cool if applications can register file type. Please note that I did not see a way to do that.

There are a lot more, but because I’m not sure if they will be available in the release version, it will better to wait for the final bits of the SDK.