Requirements and compatibility

WebRadioFM has two independent environments: the phone application and the Docusaurus documentation site. Their toolchains are not interchangeable.

Running the phone app

You need:

• a Windows Phone 8.1 device provisioned for sideloading, or a compatible Windows Phone emulator;
• a WebRadioFM .xap matching the destination architecture;
• music in the device/emulator media library;
• network access for Last.fm features; and
• a Last.fm account plus a Last.fm API key and shared secret for scrobbling.

The player itself can list and play local music without Last.fm. Authentication, Now Playing, scrobbling, love/unlove, track information, and statistics require network access and API credentials.

Building the phone app

The authoritative target in WebRadioFM.csproj is:

<TargetFrameworkIdentifier>WindowsPhone</TargetFrameworkIdentifier>
<TargetFrameworkVersion>v8.1</TargetFrameworkVersion>
<SilverlightApplication>true</SilverlightApplication>

A compatible setup normally includes:

• Windows;
• Visual Studio 2013-era Windows Phone tooling or equivalent MSBuild targets;
• Windows Phone 8.1 SDK/reference assemblies;
• Silverlight development targets; and
• PowerShell for the repository build scripts.

Modern SDKs are not a replacement

Visual Studio 2022, dotnet build, UWP workloads, and current Windows SDKs do not include the retired Windows Phone 8.1 Silverlight targets. The two empty compatibility targets at the bottom of the project file do not recreate the SDK.

The project defines AnyCPU, x86, x64, and ARM configurations. Use ARM for physical phones. Emulator architecture support depends on the installed emulator/SDK image.

Phone capabilities

Properties/WMAppManifest.xml requests these capabilities:

Capability	Purpose
ID_CAP_NETWORKING	Call the Last.fm API
ID_CAP_MEDIALIB_AUDIO	Read local songs and metadata
ID_CAP_MEDIALIB_PLAYBACK	Play media-library songs
ID_CAP_WEBBROWSERCOMPONENT	Launch Last.fm authorization
ID_CAP_ISOLATED_STORAGE	Save settings and session data

Removing a capability can produce runtime failures even when the project still compiles.

Last.fm prerequisites

Create an API application at last.fm/api/account/create. You need:

• API key — sent on API requests;
• shared secret — used locally to create MD5 request signatures; and
• a Last.fm user account — authorizes the generated token and owns the session.

The app does not ship with project-wide credentials.

Documentation site requirements

To work on this handbook, you need Node.js 20 or newer and npm:

node --version
npm install
npm start

The documentation site can be built on Windows, macOS, or Linux. It does not build or emulate the Windows Phone application.

Compatibility matrix

Task	Windows + legacy WP SDK	Current Windows only	macOS/Linux
Run Docusaurus	Yes	Yes	Yes
Build Docusaurus	Yes	Yes	Yes
Compile WebRadioFM	Yes	No	No
Run WP emulator	Yes	No	No
Sideload to a WP device	Environment-dependent	No	No
Review/edit C# and XAML	Yes	Yes	Yes