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 :-)
Related
Forgive me as this is not programming related question.
I know ASP.NET as well as WinForms development. I would like to know that if i want to learn windows mobile development how difficult it would be for me to start.
Is there a big difference between the two platforms ?
Is coding style and creating form design too different ?
If you know WinForms then you can most certainly rest assured that the Windows Phone platform will be a breeze to learn. I too came from a WinForms background and I found it pretty much a walk in the park to get in terms with Windows Phone. There are of course subtle differences in WinForms and Windows Phone such as Windows Phone uses Silverlight, which is a toned down version of WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) which is in turn a powerful version if you like of WinForms.
But again, these are subtle differences and you will easily become comfortable using the Windows Phone API.
There are many tutorials on how to get started. Just google or youtube Windows Phone tutorial and you'll find many.
In terms of Coding Style, there are no real differences. The Windows Phone platform is obviously C# compatible so you can quite literally adhere to the same design patterns as you would with a WinForms application.
The main difference I suppose is the use of XAML. When designing a page, you can drag and drop controls which creates XAML.
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
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.
Have You got any tutorials, books, any good resources to start creating mobile games using silverlight ?
Maybe any good resource on writing 2d games in silverlight for pc?
Ay way do You think that its worth learning it or any other technology would be better and have probably shinier future ?
Look at the Windows 7 Phone SDK if you are interested in Silverlight for mobile.
http://developer.windowsphone.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=cabcd5ed-7dfc-4731-9d7e-3220603cad14
. If you're doing simple games, then silverlight might be ok, but if you're serious about building games for mobile, look into XNA Studio. It will be the gaming sdk for mobile 7. It also will run on xbox and pc. To get started, watch the videos from MIX
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2010/03/17/videos-of-mix10-windows-phone-sessions.aspx
So Windows Embedded Compact 7 (another classic from the naming department) supports Silverlight for Windows Embedded.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/windowsce/compact7.mspx
But this is a C++ only stripped down version of Silverlight 2 XAML.
Does anybody know if Windows Embedded Compact 7 will support real Silverlight? This seems to be out of step with Windows Phone (which I think is based on Windows CE 6) and the fact that Windows Embedded Compact 7 supports Flash 10.1.
Not in the first release, no, it will not support managed Silverlight (or, IMO, what the entire world considers to be "Silverlight").
They may, at some point, move the work done by the Phone team to create a managed SL implementation, but they've made no announcements as to if or when that might ever occur.
You'll see "Developers,Developers" Balmer come out later like he has done before and admit they made a mistake with this. Its the developers that produce the apps and if you make all the microsoft technologies linq, wpf, ria and patterns such as MVVM unuasable developers won't trust you and move to another platform. They dropped the ball on the Phone OS by not having a great consumer oriented phone. Now they will focus on consumers stick it to the business developers that they had built up on Windows Mobile. They did a great job with the silverlight 4 so I don't understand how they can drop the ball this badly on Compact 7.
I agree about the non-uniform development environment, but you should also consider that the processor that are currently powering WP7 devices are not still available on the general embedded market where 1GHz processors are a small minority and 5-600MHz processors are used only for hi-end devices.
Trying to run both the XAML and the .NET runtime could lead to weak performances and disappointing results.
If you need RAD, use the Compact Framework.
If you need cool UI, use Silverlight for Windows Embedded.
You can't have both right now, as you can on the phone...