Category Archives: MessagingEmoticons

Today, a small update to Messaging Emoticons was certified for the marketplace that adds the ability to pin entire messages to the start screen and the option to change pin behavior to open in the app instead of copying instantly. It should be available on the marketplace soon!

I also learned today via an article on WPCentral that Windows Phone 8 has fantastic emoticon support on the keyboard.That is definitely great news! The downside is that Messaging Emoticons won’t likely have much of a use-case on new handsets. I will, of course, evaluate this decision more thoroughly when I have a phone that runs Windows Phone 8, but for the time being, it seems as though Messaging Emoticons doesn’t really need to support WP8 as it’s no longer necessary.

I will say, though…the video below shows the emoticon keyboard filtering by category and including a “favorites” category that showcases your most-used emoticons. It may be a coincidence, but it certainly reminds me of the experience I offered through Messaging Emoticons!

Regardless, the app update should be available very soon for those of you sporting Windows Phone 7.5+ devices, and it’ll still be useful in those cases! Be on the lookout!

WPCentral, a site I frequently visit and one of the largest Windows Phone communities out there, published an article highlighting Messaging Emoticons. Take a look at the article here:

http://www.wpcentral.com/your-texting-companion-app-messaging-emoticons

Many thanks to Rafael Rivera for the coverage and help with higher-quality source images for emoticons, which were able to make it into my 1.1 update published last month. This article has also helped the app reach other news sites who have given the app their own look. Here’s another article about Messaging Emoticons from WPXBOX.

The app has also been selected as one of the winners to Nokia’s “App’y New Year” contest. Thank you to Nokia and Microsoft for the new Lumia 800. It’s a very nice phone, if anyone’s in the market for an upgrade. As is the Lumia 900 coming out soon.

An update has been released this morning to the Messaging Emoticons app for Windows Phone. This update is strictly related to content, adding a few additional emoticons I missed on my first run, and drastically improving the quality of the emoticon images.

A big thanks to WPCentral for the high-quality emoticon images.

The update should be hitting your phones later today. Enjoy, rate, review, and let me know what you think!

I’ve considered myself a Windows Phone developer for a while. Ever since I decided to take the leap to Windows Phone, I’ve become quite the fan of the platform. I’ve followed developer blogs, downloaded the tools, and been to developer camps, but until now, I’ve never released a Windows Phone app. Or a mobile app at all, for that matter.

Messaging Emoticons fills a relatively untouched market on this ecosystem by creating a sort of quick-reference guide for all of the emoticons (“emoji”) that Windows Phone offers its users. There are just over 100 available emoticons, and they work when Windows Phone users send them to either Windows Live Messenger friends or other Windows Phone users. When I started the app, there were no complete references to this. Over that time, a few blogs were release on the Windows Phone Developer blog detailing some of the emoticons available, but still no app reference.

So I gave the masses what they needed, and created a complex emoticon reference app. It features two modes. “Compose View” allows you to type a message and insert emoticons into it on the fly without ever losing the on-screen keyboard, and “Copy Mode” shows more emoticons for a quick keyboard copy. In addition to copying emoticons, the app can copy messages into new, unaddressed messages.

But that’s not all. Emoticons are sorted by category, so users can filter emoticons by category for easy reference, and even save a new category to load when the app starts. There’s also a favorites category that users can control themselves. A context menu appears when a user holds his or her finger on any emoticon. From there, the user can add or remove the emoticon from their favorites, copy it, or pin it as a live tile (where the user can tap on it for a quick copy without ever having to see the main page of the app).

For more information, view my new apps page.

Messaging Emoticons is ad-supported and is available now for free in the Windows Phone marketplace. An update will be available soon with higher-resolution images and a few additional emoticons.