Week View startup time when no network connection exists

Recently I got some emails, telling me that my app Week View sometimes starts slowly but the behavior was not predictable. Most times the start takes 2 seconds but sometimes the start takes nearly 8 seconds.

I tested this on my phone and i am very glad to have more than 50 beta testers that test a new update and give me feedback before an official marketplace submission but i was not able to reproduce the problem.

A recent email from a user gave me a more detailed hint which finally allowed me to track down the problem and fix it.

Week View checks, if an internet connection exists on start-up. If present and the user is signed in to windows live inside the app, it loads data from windows live calendar to bypass some of the limitations of windows phone, mainly to show details for private appointments and calendar categories.

The problem is: Checking for a network connection is a „blocking call“ in the windows phone programming environment, something i did not expect since MS violates some of their own design guidelines here.

A more detailed description of the problem can be found at: http://cisforcoder.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/better-way-to-check-for-an-internet-connection-on-wp7/

Of course i am already working on the next update for Week View, which will contain this bug-fix and some new features.