Im searching for a good resource/list of all features I have at my disposal as a a WP7-developer such as music, sound, accelerometer, gps, flashlight, vibrator etc etc. What can I do with the phone? What can I use? Preferable with simple code-examples. Both when it comes to XNA and Silverlight.
The Windows Phone Development on the MSDN Library is a great resource for all of the available APIs and with code samples for most of it.
You might also be interested in the following resources:
Charles Petzold: Programming Windows Phone 7
Rob Miles: Windows Phone Programming in C#
UI Design and Interaction Guide for Windows Phone 7
Nick Randolph and Christoper Fairburn: Professional Windows Phone 7 Application Development: Building Applications and Games Using Visual Studio, Silverlight, and XNA
As it relates to XNA, you can see all of the educational catalog content that relates to the windows phone platform on the AppHub site at this URL:
http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/?contenttype=0&devarea=0&platform=54&sort=1
Try "Programming with Windows Phone 7" by Charles Petzold:
http://www.charlespetzold.com/phone/
It is a free online book that describes the features of WIndows Phne 7 in depth (including the phones hardware capabilities), and how to program in Silverlght and XNA.
Jeff covers alot of features in 31 days of WP7:
http://www.jeffblankenburg.com/post/31-Days-of-Windows-Phone-7.aspx
Related
I have just installed Windows 8.1 and then installed Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition.
I tried to create a Windows Phone app and found out that there are two ways of creating it (in fact 3 if you count Universal Apps if I am not wrong)
Windows Phone
Windows Phone Silverlight
Can someone please tell me what exactly is the difference between these two? I read a couple of articles but still don't understand and this whole thing is very confusing.
When I tried to create a Windows Phone Silverlight project then it asked me whether I want to target 8.0 or 8.1.
When I tried to create Windows Phone project then it asked me to get a Developer license and didn't ask about version 8.0 or 8.1.
What shall I chose if my aim is to create an application for mobile devices (tablet/phones) that will run on maximum devices running Windows Phone 8 version?
Windows Phone 8 Silverlight is the older UI on Windows Phone 8. WinRT XAML is used for Windows Store Apps(these are Universal Apps). Windows Phone 8.1 Silverlight is a bit different as explained here.
Windows Phone Silverlight, although older, is better in some ways. If your aim is to develop an app that is targeted only for phones and that doesn't have any use getting ported to Win8/RT, go with Silverlight. Background Audio is a mess in WinRT. Speech Recognition with Cortana is worse.
The controls of WinRT XAML are buggy. For example, there is a clear performance degradation of MapControl in WinRT XAML, whereas, in Silverlight, this is smoother.
On the other hand, Windows Store Apps have .NET Native, which converts C# to native C++ code, resulting in performance gains.
For a beginner, I would advise starting with Windows Phone 8 Silverlight apps.
Windows Phone Silverlight is the "old" platform that WP8.0 apps are built on. It asked you to target 8.0 or 8.1 because WP8.1 has a hybrid mode that lets you build WP8.1 apps but still have access to the Sliverlight API if you had a whole lot of legacy code you didn't want to port over just yet.
Windows Phone is the (mostly) universal platform for WP8.1 that is based on Windows Runtime.
I know this might seem odd for many Silverlight professionals, but alas, thats the case.
I learnt Silverlight just to make app on Windows Phone 7. Hence, for me Silverlight starts and ends with Windows Phone 7.
So, If I have to now design a Silverlight application for a browser, do I have to go back and learn any additional stuff or is the knowledge gained from learning for Windows Phone good enough to dive into creating the browser application.
I do know scope differences like 3.5+ in phone and 4,5 versions of Silverlight in Browser and lack of controls for Windows Phone development.
Also, I come from a development background, not a designing one.
/andy
Andy,
most of what you have learned while developing from windows phone will be applicable to the desktop. There are some differences and you can get a good understanding of those differences here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff426931(v=vs.95).aspx
hth
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This is a community wiki list of Windows Phone 7 resources. Feel free to edit/add/etc.
When posting, please use the friendly format of
[Actual Name of resource with a link]
not
[some long URL with no meaning unless I click on it]
General Information
App hub - central place for windows phone/xbox development tools/tutorials/info
Windows Phone Home
Windows Phone Team blog
Programming Guide
Class Library Reference
Microsoft Patterns & Practices: Windows Phone 7 Developer Guide
Blogs
Den by default: Windows Phone 7
.NET Zone: Windows Phone 7
Shawn Wildermuth: Windows Phone 7
Jeff Blankenburg: 31 Days of Windows Phone
Articles
Building a Windows Phone 7 Puzzle Game
Windows Phone 7 View Model Style Video Player
Perst - a database for Windows Phone 7 Silverlight
Understanding the Windows Phone Application Execution Model, Tombstoning, Launcher and Choosers:
(part1) (part2) (part3)
Performance Tips when creating WP7 apps
Windows Phone 7 Live Tile Schedules – How to execute instant Live Tile updates
Tips to get your Application in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace ASAP
Checking for Network connectivity in Windows Phone 7 SDK
Windows Phone 7.1: a Quick Start
A Simple Multi-Page Windows Phone 7 Phonegap Example
Books
Programming Windows Phone 7
Professional Windows Phone 7 Application Development
Pro Windows Phone 7 Development
Beginning Windows Phone 7 Development
Learning Windows Phone Programming
Windows Phone 7 Game Development
Windows Phone 7 Application Development
101 Windows Phone 7 Apps, Volume I: Developing Apps 1-50
101 Windows Phone 7 Apps, Volume II: Developing Apps 51-101 (Fall 2011)
Podcasts
Charlie Kindel on Windows Phone 7
Daniel Egan talks Windows Phone 7 Live at Launch
Windows Phone 7 Series - The Developer Experience with Charlie Kindel
Charles Petzold on Windows Phone 7 Series
Videos
Windows Phone 7 Jump Start sessions
Colin Melia on Windows Phone 7
Channel9 Content for WIndows Phone
Developer Tools
8 Must-Have Tools for Windows Phone 7 Development
Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW
EQATEC Profiler for Windows Phone 7
BugSense, bug tracking for Windows Phone 7
Frameworks
OpenNETCF.IoC Framework
Autofac for WP7
Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework
MVVM Light Toolkit
Columbus: Windows Phone 7 MVC framework
Windows Phone MVP
Caliburn.Micro - MVVM framework strongly based on conventions
Windows Phone 7 Jumpstart Training
Training (Video and PDF) includes:
An Introduction to the Windows Phone Platform
Game Building on the Windows Phone Platform
Advanced Windows Phone Development
Selling Your Windows Phone Solutions & Wrap Up
The .NET REST client RestSharp supports Windows Phone 7. It really simplifies using web services and deserializing the response.
Windows Phone Dev Podcast!!! Don't forget that one! They let you know the latest about the Windows Phone AND they talk to developers (like the guy who made Evernote) about how they made their apps.
I would also add: 30+ Excellent Windows Phone Development Tutorials
Here is some information about framework that I had recently published: http://columbus.codeplex.com/
Columbus is MVC framework designed specifically for the Windows Phone 7 platform and supports:
Strongly typed navigation with history
View Models that can survive tombstoning
Asynchronous and cancelable controller actions with execution progress
Commands (CAB style)
Multiple navigation frames
Features to help applications to be complaint with 'Windows Phone 7 Application Certification Requirements'
Easy integration with IoC containers available on the Windows Phone 7 platform (source code solution contains samples demonstrating how to use Columbus with Autofac and Ninject).
Simplified and testable usage of Choosers
Here is another good intro into phone specific features of silverlight:
Andrea Boschin on WP7
Plurasight
http://www.pluralsight-training.net/microsoft/
this has excellent in depth video tutorials to get you started.
There are few excellent tutorial sets for beginners.
Video series from Bob Tabor for absolute beginners These videos are excellent and easy to follow.
Once you have started and need help on specific topics consider searching on GeekChamp
When you are in a position to publish apps and fine tune things then the blog series by Jeff Blankenburg is quite useful.
I've heard that Windows Phone 7's user interface (UI) is completely based on Silverlight. Can anybody confirm this? Or it is implemented by other frameworks?
Windows Phone 7 will support developing apps in either Silverlight or XNA.
Are you asking if the shell, etc that comes on the phone itself is written in Silverlight? My first question would be "why does it matter what Microsoft used?" It's probably a good bet that they leveraged it, but I doubt they did everything in SL. At some point they have to get down to the OS. For example, I doubt the built-in media player core or Office apps are SL.
Looking at the unlocked emulator image contents would certainly let you deduce which parts were developed with what technologies. I leave that exercise to you.
Indeed Silverlight is used for third-party apps on Windows Phone 7, plus XNA is supported too as mentioned.
However the Office apps and some first-party applications are written using the Iris framework which is an internal only developer framework similar to WPF, it is the same framework used for the Zune Software (Dorado) which is used to sync to a Windows Phone 7 device.
Yes it is based on Silverlight
I can tell you one thing, they are using Expression Blend (or a modified version of it) for parts of the core UI design. You can see the developers using this on one of their promo videos.
If I want to develop for Windows Phone 7, what should I learn? XNA, Silverlight or other?
Microsoft has not yet announced what the development environment will be. They say they'll get more in-depth at MIX. If I were a betting man, I'd guess you'll get XNA out of the box, followed by some light version of Silverlight.
EDIT
I'd say it's no longer a guess that it will be Silverlight and XNA just based on the MIX sessions for Windows Phone.
If you want to make applications (or even simple games), choose silverlight. If you want to make 3d games, or games with xbox live integration, choose xna :-)