Using Resource Files to Localize Content

You have now been diligently designing your application for international markets: you have allowed enough space on the UI for more verbose languages and you have used only standard formatting options for date, time, and currency values. However, you still have to perform translation of the application interface and resources to other languages. This certainly could be the most labor-intensive part of internationalizing your application.

As mentioned previously, the application should be flexible enough to function in different locales without the need for code change and recompilation. That means that all the resources required for the proper functioning of the application need to be located outside the source code of an application and loaded on demand in response to a request for culture-specific elements. The location of those resources on the Windows Phone platform are in the resource-only (or *.resx) files. In this section's example, you will enhance your WP7AnniversaryParty announcement application with the use of .resx files.