I used the time over the Easter holidays to update some of my open source projects. It was mostly fixing small issues and also improving support for Windows Phone 8. In particular:

Your Last About Dialog (also on NuGet)

Your Last Options Dialog (NuGet)

Liphofra (NuGet) – first public release

I also introduced some changes to PAARC lately, and worked a bit on the Phone Net Tools – however not to a point that would justify a new release (see the repository if you're interested).

Enjoy!

I've released version 2.0 of my open source component "Your Last About Dialog". This major new release adds full styling support to the about page, which gives you complete control over the visual appearance of the component. This not only includes simple details like foreground and background colors, font sizes and styles, but also much more sophisticated things like the possibility to add page transitions from the Silverlight Toolkit, or control the visibility of the system tray and other details.

Version 2 also improves the install experience from NuGet by integrating some quick start help, to get you up and running in only a minute, without the need to study the documentation separately. As always, installing from NuGet is the recommended way, but you can of course also download the binaries and source code from CodePlex if you want. To learn about the new features in more detail, consult the "Styling" section of the documentation. The default styles that are created for you when you install the NuGet package also contains some pointers and comments on what you can do.

Have fun :)

Over the last weeks, some users of my project "YLAD" brought some additional localization scenarios to my attention. This resulted in both some improvements to the project itself (which I've just released as a new version on CodePlex and NuGet), and the need to talk about some obstacles you might come across. More...

Inspired by a blog post from Jeff Wilcox back in July (here), I started creating a generic about dialog for Windows Phone based on his initial ideas and design. Over time I improved the code more and more, created new features and avoided pitfalls, and eventually added localization support. At this point I think it's a pretty handy piece of code that is also interesting for others to use in their applications, and it has proven to be robust and reliable by multiple applications in the Marketplace that use it. Remembering my own "reinventing the wheel" issues with about and help screens, I hope that this addition will indeed be "your last about dialog", serving all your requirements. Included features:

• Extracts all information about your app automatically (name, version, description etc.).
• Allows overriding all information with alternate fixed values.
• Shows a configurable list of hyperlinks to your web site(s) or email addresses etc.
• Shows a button that lets the user rate your app in the Marketplace.
• Supports additional pages (pivot items) to be added, containing local or remote content.
• Freely configurable fallback content for remote sources that cannot be retrieved.
• Supports both text (with auto-formatting/highlighting) and XAML content.
• Can be localized for any culture you want to support.
• Only loaded when the user requests it – zero memory/performance impact otherwise.

To learn more about the project and configuration options, please visit the documentation on CodePlex. The download package there contains the binary library and multiple sample configurations, and the available source code also has a small additional Windows Phone sample app that uses the dialog for demonstration. The more convenient way to pull the library into your project is to use the NuGet package.

YLAD – Your Last About Dialog:
On CodePlex 
In the NuGet gallery (recommended for installation)

Enjoy!