PhoneGap Build app and more languages in Windows Marketplace

When preparing an application for publication in Google Play, you can provide description and other details of your application in as many languages as you want, directly in Google Play Developer Console.

You won’t find anything similar in Windows Phone Dev Center. This is, because Windows Marketplace is the only market of “big three” platforms, that require you to declare supported languages inside your application before you’ll be able to create store impression for your application in different languages.

According to official PGB support you need to add this piece of config-file code to your configuration:

<gap:config -file platform="winphone" parent="/Deployment" mode="replace">
    <languages xmlns="">
        <language code="en-GB"></language>
        <language code="pl-PL"></language>
    </languages>
    <defaultlanguage xmlns="" code="en-GB"></defaultlanguage>
</gap:config>

to your config.xml file and rebuild application to enable other languages in Windows Store.

Things, you should note or consider:

1. Changing (or adding new) languages in Windows Phone Dev Center (after adding or changing them in your .xap file) will invalidate all graphics and text added previously and you’ll have to provide them again after this change, before publishing an update.

2. On contrary to deploying a PhoneGap app to Google Play, you are required to provide screenshots and descriptions of your app in all languages, it support (it was optional in case of publishing app to Google Play). Failing to do so will prevent you from publishing an update of your application.

Here you’ll find a complete list of culture and language codes supported by newest WP applications and here a detailed information about config file elements, for those unfamiliar with them.

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