LCARS Interface for Windows Phone 8.1 is Now Available!

It's been a long time coming, and we've given you all a few teasers along the way about what this update includes. The time has finally arrived for our new Windows Phone 8.1 update to LCARS Interface!

In many ways this is an update to the Windows Phone 8.0 app. It's also an entirely new app in a lot of ways as well! A lot of it appears the same on the outside, but underneath is an app that's been completely re-written from the ground up. Windows Phone 7.X and 8.0 apps used a version of the Microsoft Silverlight framework, while Windows 8 Store apps used the new Windows Runtime framework. Starting with Windows Phone 8.1, phone apps now have the option to be either Silverlight or Windows Runtime apps. Rather than simply upgrade to Windows Phone 8.1 Silverlight, we chose to start over and convert it to a Windows Runtime app instead. There are many reasons for this. most of which I've covered in other blog entries.  But there are many performance improvements and new features available now, in addition to this re-write allowing the Windows 8 store (Desktop/Laptop/Tablet) version of this app and the Windows Phone version to share a common code core which will speed up being able to bring new features to both simultaneously!  Much of the same functionality will be available to both, and the layout you see will depend on which device is being used. As a result, many of the new features in this update will be making their way to the Windows 8.1 app very soon!

For the full list of changes that this update brings, see the Version History section of this blog.

A special Thank You to those who participated in Beta testing this version! Without your assistance this update would not have gotten to this point in either quality and would not have been completed yet!

Please let us know how you like the new features! We love to get feedback on what works, what doesn't work, or what you think is missing that we should add.