How to: Create a Splash Screen for Windows Phone
March 22, 2012
For applications that take more than a couple of seconds to load, a splash screen can give the user immediate feedback that the application is launching. When an application is launched, the splash screen is immediately displayed and will remain displayed until the navigation to the first page is complete.
When you create a new Silverlight project, a Splashscreenimage.jpg file is added to the project. This image must be 480 x 800 pixels. You can replace the image with any image you choose, but it must remain the same size and must be named Splashscreenimage.jpg. The Build Action property must be set to Content.
For applications that take a long time to load, it is recommended that you have an animated splash screen to indicate progress while preparing your application to run.
We recommend that XNA Framework–based applications create their splash screen by not including a SplashScreenImage.jpg but instead:
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Keep the size of the entry assembly small.
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In the Initialize() method:
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Call base.Initialize() to create the GraphicsDevice properly.
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Load the texture. Size it to the target resolution and orientation of the game. Set the texture to auto resize to a power of 2. Use DXT Compressed format.
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Create a SpriteBatch.
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Render the texture.
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Call GraphicsDevice.Present().
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In the Update() method, incrementally load your content.
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In the Draw() method, continue to draw the start texture and switch to a loading animation as soon as those assets are loaded.
