Bing Maps is the most widely used map control inside of Windows Store apps. Many simple apps consist of a single page user experience while many other consist of multiple pages. Many developers like to use Bing Maps throughout their application, but have found that this results in the map control constantly being loaded/disposed as the user navigates between pages. This doesn’t make for the best user experience, as there is a slight delay due to...
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More and more developers want to add auto complete to their map applications, and for good reason. It’s convenient for users and can help make your map application a user-friendly delight. In this blog post I will show you how to use Bing Spatial Data Services to create custom auto complete functionality in your next app. Some developers have turned to using the Bing Maps geocoding services to do this, but this often ends up generating a large...
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In a recent blog post, you saw how to use JavaScript and CSS3 to create custom animations. Now you’ll see how to create the same custom animations for a Windows Store app using .NET.  You are in luck, as all of these animations can be used with the Bing Maps WPF control as well with just a few tweaks. You can find the complete source code for this blog post in the MSDN code sample here. Setting up the base project To get started, open Visual...
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Do you find that you spend more time digging through documentation trying to figure out what properties do rather than spending time building great apps? IntelliSense can help. A few weeks ago, someone asked me if there was any IntelliSense support for Bing Maps. I vaguely remembered there being an open source project that added IntelliSense for Bing Maps AJAX v6.3 in Visual Studio. With a quick search on Bing I found the project on CodePlex and...
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Bing Maps is a very powerful mapping platform that is often used for creating engaging user experiences. The fluid interactive maps make for a great canvas when visualizing location based data. In this blog post we are going to take a look at how to make the user experience a little more engaging by adding custom animations that can be used in both web and Windows Store apps. Full source code for this blog post can be found in the MSDN Code...
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I have been helping developers visualize their data on Bing Maps for many years. One of the most requests I’ve had in the past is, “I have this data, but can you show it on a map?” More often than not this data would be sitting in an Excel file, usually with some address data, but rarely contained any coordinate information. To get this data into Bing Maps I would geocode the address information and then convert the data into a format that could...
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The native Bing Maps Windows Store control has two types of shapes: polygons and polylines. These shapes are great for representing areas and paths on the map. Often it is useful to be able to associate some information or metadata with these shapes. In past versions of Bing Maps we could easily store this information in the Tag property of the shape. This makes it easy to retrieve this data when a shape is clicked or tapped. Unfortunately,the...
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In Bing Maps we can easily create simple polygons. Simple polygons consist of a single exterior ring of coordinates. However, in more advance applications it is useful to be able to draw more complex polygons. 
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Clustering of pushpins in Bing Maps consists of grouping together nearby locations into clusters. As the user zooms in, the clusters break apart to reveal the individual locations. The goal of this process is to reduce the number of pushpins that are displayed on the map at any given time. 
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Depending on the type of application you are creating, you may find it useful to be able to share a map with someone. Whether it’s a map of a single location or a map with a route on it, this can easily be accomplished in a Windows Store app.
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