A Few Additional Options Inside the Windows Simulator in VS11 Beta

Introduction

In case you haven’t noticed, the Windows Simulator in VS11 Beta has changed slightly. We have the same panel located to the right of the simulator as before, but with a few additional options.

Here is a look at the simulator options with the version of VS11 released after the Build event.

…and here are the new options available after the latest VS11 Beta released on Feb 29th, 2012.

Digging in

You can easily access the Simulator inside of Visual Studio 11, by going to Debug and selecting Simulator from the drop-down.

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Once you run your application, you will see it running in the simulator as shown below:

Let’s explore these new options. If you want to review what all of the buttons do then read my previous blog post.

Set Location

If we take the first new option, then we can easily set the location for the app by inputting latitude, longitude, altitude and error radius.

Of course, if your tablet has the ability to send GPS coordinates then you can use your real location by unchecking “Use simulated location”.

Screenshot

If you want to take a screenshot of your app, then simply click the "Screenshot” button.

With the button directly under it, you can make a few additional tweaks.  Including where it saves the image and to open the saved image location.

 

By default, it saves to the Clipboard and stores the file in your Pictures Library.

It stores the images with the same resolution as set in the Simulator:

Help

The last option just opens your browser to the following page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/apps/hh441475.aspx

Wrap-up

As you can see from this post, the simulator in VS11 Beta adds some functionality that we have been using with the Windows Phone 7 emulator. We actually had to wait well beyond the beta bits to get location and screenshots in the phone emulator options. Let’s hope the rest of Windows 8 is as polished as the simulator is. If you have any questions then feel free to contact me. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed and follow me on twitter.

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