Tuesday 16 March 2010

Windows Phone Development Follow-Up

Yesterday at MIX 10 Microsoft has finally announced development details for their new Windows Phone 7 mobile OS. So what do we know now?

1. We may use Silvelight OR XNA to build applications for WP7!  Silverlight will be used mostly for business applications and simple games and XNA will be used for building heavy 3d games.

2. Development tools for Windows Phone 7 are absolutely and totally FREE! Following this link you may download Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP that includes the following tools:

  • Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP
  • Windows Phone Emulator CTP
  • Silverlight for Windows Phone CTP
  • XNA 4.0 Game Studio CTP

Yet another (but not required) tool that can be used for WP7 development is Expression Blend 4. It’s not free but users of version 3 may freely upgrade their installations.

3. You may develop your applications in emulator or at your real phone as many times as you wish. If you want to place your application to Windows Marketplace – you’ll have to pay $100 for a developer license. It’s not really a huge sum keeping in mind that people who post applications to Marketplace will get a 70%-off from price of any application there.

4. Microsoft has also provided a free e-book on WP7 development written by Charles Petzold. It’s not finished yet but has first six chapters that are quite enough to dive into the topic.

5. First phones from Windows Phone 7 Series will appear on market in August. It gives us enough time to learn Silverlight WP7 development and publish our shiny new applications to Marketplace.

It’s really juicy and provides great opportunities for .NET developers. Let’s ride that wave!

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