Windows Store App Development: In-App Feedback Links

Something I have started to do with my applications is to make it easy for the people who use the applications to send feedback – since that is the best way to improve it is based on the feedback of those who use it. The question then becomes, how to I collect this feedback?

I could put some screen in the application but I decided to rather have a simpler method for this – email. All I need now is a way to launch the email program and ideally have my email address & subject prefilled – which is not possible with the share source experience.

The solution to this is something we have used for a long time before Windows 8 – protocol handlers, and in particular mailto.

So how do you launch a protocol handler in a Windows Store app – the same way you launch a web page, the Launcher.LaunchUriAsync method.

The usage of protocol handlers does open a lot of possibilities too for sharing between Windows Store apps & Windows desktop apps!