Announcing: Your Last About Dialog (YLAD)

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!