Back at the beginning of this week I shared my experience of building an app with the Windows Phone App Studio and even posted a 10 minute video walkthrough of creating a similar app.
That initial app, ISS Jax, was very niche and basic. It did however show the potential that is within the WP App Studio for building apps.
I decided to take that style of app to another level and so I dove back into the WP App Studio to create an app with a little more capability.
The result of that work is an app I have named ISS Passes and it uses the same basic premise that ISS Jax uses but expands the available options.
Now instead of just showing the upcoming visible ISS passes over Jax this new app shows the visible ISS Passes over the 10 most popular US and International cities according to NASA’s Spot The Station website.
So I used these RSS feeds as my data source and just laid out a welcome page and then two menu pages to show those choices. The data is displayed in the same manner as it is with my ISS Jax app.
Here are some screenshots to show you the layout and how the app presents the data:
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The data provided by NASA shows the basic info of when the pass will occur, what direction it is coming from, the direction it is heading and the elevation with 90 degrees being directly overhead. If you are in or near one of these 20 cities then this app will still give you a good idea of where to look for the ISS.
Using Windows Phone App Studio continues to be a great learning experience and I plan to keep working to improve the apps functionality, all from within App Studio, with the goal being to see how far it will go in providing the ability to customize and increase the functionality of the app.
If you have a built an app with App Studio please share a link in the comments so we can see your efforts.
