Blocking the UI thread must be prevented at all costs. Especially when downloading data: don't forget that your application is executing on a phone, which has a very instable network. If the data takes two minutes to load, then the UI will be freezed for two minutes. It would be an awful user experience.
There's many ways to prevent that. For instance, you can keep the same logic but waiting in a background thread instead of the UI thread:
public SenastePage()
{
// Write the XAML of your page to display the loading animation per default
InitializeComponent();
Task.Factory.StartNew(LoadData);
}
private void LoadData()
{
((ManualResetEvent)PhoneApplicationService.Current.State["manualResetEvent"]).WaitOne();
Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() =>
{
SenasteArticleList.ItemsSource = ((ArticleList)PhoneApplicationService.Current.State["articleList"]).posts;
// Hide the loading animation
}
}
That's just a quick and dirty way to reach the result you want. You could also rewrite your code using tasks, and using Task.WhenAll
to trigger an action when they're all finished.