How do I change the application orientation of a Surface application

Question

I need to rotate the UI 180 degrees of my surface application in runtime when a user presses a button. How do I do this?

Answer 1

Just apply a RotateTransform on your topmost panel (I think you can even do it on the actual surface window if you want) with an angle of 180 degrees.

<s:SurfaceWindow x:Class="SurfaceApplication1.SurfaceWindow1"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:s="http://schemas.microsoft.com/surface/2008"
    Title="SurfaceApplication1">
  <Grid>
    <Grid.LayoutTransform>
      <RotateTransform x:Name="mainOrientation"/>
    </Grid.LayoutTransform>
    <s:SurfaceButton Click="btn_Click" Content="Click to rotate" />   
    ... other content here ...
   </Grid>
</s:SurfaceWindow>

And in code behind:

private void btn_Click (object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    if (mainOrientation.Angle == 0)
        mainOrientation.Angle = 180;
    else
        mainOrientation.Angle = 0;
}

As a related topic, you can also listen to the surface's OrientationChanged event to know when a user has changed side of your app. A good practice is to flip the app to the correct side when this happens.