Windows Phone 8 development shortcut keys with keyboard

Introduction

The Windows Phone 8  SDK comes with some shortcut keys for emulator .It would be very helpful for us to speedup our development process.1.WindowsPhone Emulator Screen unlock

    1.1. To lock the screen in the emulator by using the keyboard

•     With the emulator open, press F12 on your computer keyboard twice.
  The F12 key emulates the power button on the phone. The first key press turns off the display. The second key press turns the display on again with the lock screen engaged.
  You can unlock the screen by using the mouse to slide the lock screen upward.
  

     1.2. To lock the screen in the emulator by using the Simulation Dashboard

         We can also lock/unlock the emulator from visual studio 2012 by following steps

          Open visual studio 2012=>Tools=>Simulation Dashboard.

         Now you will find following dialog box

       

 Fig:Simulation Dashboard                Fig:Windows phone Emulator screen unlock

To simulate a reminder

1. Run your app on the emulator or a connected device, with or without debugging.
   Or, run your app with app monitoring and profiling to measure its quality and performance. For more information about app monitoring and profiling, see Windows Phone Application Analysis.
2. In Visual Studio, on the Tools menu, open Simulation Dashboard. Find the Reminders section of the dashboard.
3. To trigger a reminder immediately, click the Trigger reminder button.
4. Test how your app handles the interruption.

 2.Enable or disable the windows phone emulator NetWork connections from visual studio 2012
To enable/disable the emulator newtwork connections open vas2012=>Tools=>Simulation Dashboard  

Fig:Enable/disable emulator networking

3. Capture screen shot from windows phone 8 emulator
 3.1. Using the Windows Snipping Tool to capture the emulator window

You can create your app screenshot easily by using the Snipping Tool feature of Windows®. For more information about this tool, see Snipping Tool.Or you find the snipping tool from windows search.

3.2.Using the built-in emulator screenshot tool

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You can create screenshots of your Windows Phone apps by using the built-in emulator screenshot tool. The tool creates PNG files that match the resolution of the running emulator.

For more info you may visit Microsoft reference

4.Keyboard Shortcut keys for windows phone 8 emulator

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The following table lists the keys on a hardware keyboard that you can use to emulate the buttons and other controls on a Windows Phone device.

Computer hardware key	Windows Phone hardware button	Notes
F1	BACK	Long presses work as expected.
F2	START	Long presses work as expected.
F3	SEARCH
F4	Not applicable.
F5	Not applicable.
F6	CAMERA HALF	A dedicated camera button that is pressed halfway.
F7	CAMERA FULL	A dedicated camera button.
F8	Not applicable.
F9	VOLUME UP
F10	VOLUME DOWN
F11	Not applicable.
ESC	BACK	Long presses work as expected.
PAUSE/BREAK	Toggle Keyboard	Toggles the hardware keyboard.
PAGE UP	Keyboard Up	Enables the hardware keyboard.
PAGE DOWN	Keyboard Down	Disables the hardware keyboard.

Windows Phone tutorials for beginners key points

This section is included for only windows phone beginners.However this article can covers following questions.Off course these key words are more helpful for getting more best results about this topic in search engines like google/bing/yahoo.. 

1.How to use the computer keyboard with windows phone 8 emulator 

2.keybord shortcuts in windows phone 8 emulator 

3.Shortcuts keys for Developing on Windows Phone 8 Emulator 

Have a nice day by Subramanyam Raju