I never posted here upon its release but a few months ago I released an app for Windows Phone called EchoesJS.
it’s an app that uses the API of the JavaScript news board, echojs. I use the site every day and wanted a way to quickly see the stories and comments. I also included a way to view the article through Readability for sites that weren’t mobile-optimised.
I intended to keep adding features and I’ve just submitted a new version that has a few updates and fixes a bug. The API now includes the comment count with each article so I’m now showing that next to the title. Before I was giving the ability to view the comments without giving any indication to the user as to whether there were any! This was always annoying and now the user has some idea if anyone else has commented.
There’s been an increase lately in apps that stray from the pivots and panoramas of Windows Phone. The Facebook app copies the same style from iOS and Android, for example. I think this is a necessary step in Windows Phone becoming more mainstream. However, I’ve really liked the change Microsoft has made in their Bing apps of reducing the size of the pivot/panorama headers. It seems like a natural step in the reduction of chrome and allows more space for the actual content. I’m interested to see how they build on this for the next version of Windows Phone. I’ve attempted to bring a little bit of this to my app.
The updated version of EchoesJS should be available in the Windows Phone Store soon.