Using RadControls for Windows Phone 8 in Visual Studio 2013 Preview

Introduction

For those eager to use RadControls for Windows Phone 8 in Visual Studio 2013 Preview, I have outlined a few steps below that may help. Before proceeding make sure you have downloaded the latest bits and installed them. We are going to take a look at adding references to our components as well as adding them back to the toolbox. Also, please remember that these work-arounds are temporary while Visual Studio 13 is in preview.

Please note that when you are installing Visual Studio 2013 preview, you will need to check the box to enable the Windows Phone 8 SDK. It is also worth noting, that you cannot build Windows Phone 7.x projects in Visual Studio 2013 Preview.

Steps to Add References

After you create a new Windows Phone 8 project, you will need to add the references to the binaries manually. The default Solution Explorer looks like the following as shown in Figure 1:

Figure 1: Default Solution Explorer for Windows Phone 8 in Visual Studio 2013 Preview

Right click on references -> extension and select the components that you wish to use as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Reference Manager to add components.

If you don’t see the components listed there, select browse and navigate to the folder called, “C:\Program Files (x86)\Telerik\RadControls for Windows Phone 8 Q2 2013\Binaries\WindowsPhone” and select the components you wish to use.

After your components have been added, you can see them in the solution explorer and begin adding XAML to MainPage.xaml.cs.

Steps to Restore the ToolBox Items

You can easily add RadControls for Windows Phone 8 back by right clicking anywhere in the Toolbox and selecting Choose Items as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Choose Items menu found inside the toolbox.

Once the “Choose Toolbox Items” dialog has launched, select Windows Phone Components and filter the dialog with the word “Telerik” and select the items you wish to add back to the ToolBox. This menu is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Choose Toolbox Items menu.

You will now see your components listed under the toolbox and can drag and drop them onto the designer as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Dragging and Dropping RadCalendar from the Visual Studio 2013 Toolbox to the Designer.

Wrap-Up

I hope this blog post clears up any confusion around our RadControls for Windows Phone 8 and Visual Studio 2013. If you have any questions or comments, then please leave them below and I will get back to you.

-Michael Crump (@mbcrump)