fignewtron was here

In a previous post, during the WP7 CTP timeframe, I wrote about how to get charts into your phone applications.  It is much easier now.  You can still use the Data Visualization assemblies that David Anson prepared here.  But now you don’t have to go through the steps to remove the signing as before.  Simply follow instructions in my earlier post or on David’s.  Happy charting…again!

If you happen to have Expression Blend 4 installed alongside the Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone, you may find that the Context Menu looks something like this:

One of these things is not like the other.  Which of the two “Microsoft Expression Blend 4” menu items do you choose?!  The easiest way to differentiate between the two versions is, well, to click on one of them.  Opening the Blend IDE only to find that it cannot recognize your solution can be time consuming.  So, here is a quick registry location you may want to edit to fix that issue.

Open up your registry and search for the text that appears in the context menu, “Microsoft Expression Blend 4”.  Which should lead you to the following location, eventually.

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\MuiCache

You can see that all you need to do is edit the data for the key (at your own risk) and add something like “for Phone” to the name.

Then you get a much easier context menu to work with.