Using a Progress Ring in Windows Phone 8.1

I'm slowly getting the hang of unified applications. Most of the time I'm having to forget how the phone does things, and pick up some Windows 8 habits. The busy indicator is a case in point. Using it is very easy, but it is different from the phone and so I thought I'd blog it here in case I forget. You can get a rather nice animated ring display like the one above by simply adding it to the XAML in your page:

<ProgressRing Name="BusyProgressRing" IsActive="False"></ProgressRing>

Then, in your program, you can just turn it on and off when you start something that might take a while to complete.

BusyProgressRing.IsActive = true;

I've written a stupidly simple unified app that lets you start and stop the ring displaying at the touch of a button. You can find it here. 

This form of display is used when your program is doing something that will take a while to complete, and you don't know how long it will be. I use it when I'm setting up Bluetooth connections.