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Introducing Windows Phone 7 Development Tools

  • Article

Today at MIX10, we are introducing the Windows Phone 7 Series development story. At the heart of Windows Phone 7 Series development is Silverlight. This enables you to bring your existing development skills in building Windows Phone 7 applications.

Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP, Microsoft’s developer toolset for Windows Phone 7 Series, is now available for download.

The Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP contains what you need to get started with Windows Phone 7 development. Specifically, it includes the following:

- CTP of Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone – This allows you to develop and debug your phone application in a familiar development environment. If you are already using the release candidate of Visual Studio 2010, the Windows Phone 7 Series Add-in for Visual Studio lets you create applications alongside your web, cloud and desktop applications.

- Windows Phone 7 Series Emulator – This is integrated with Visual Studio so you can see your app in action and debug it as you would with any other VS project.

- Silverlight - Microsoft has extended our platform technologies from the web, desktop and console to the phone giving developers a broader application development experience. With your existing development skills you can start developing applications for the phone today. Or if you have a great app already, Silverlight lets you write once and optimize everywhere, including the phone.

- XNA Game Studio – This enables you to build games spanning the phone, desktop and Xbox 360.

Expression Blend for Windows Phone, a professional design tool for building immersive mobile experiences in Silverlight, is not a part of the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP, but you can download it today as well.

Getting Started

Developing phone applications for Windows Phone 7 Series is similar to developing Silverlight or XNA applications in Visual Studio. The Start Page in Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone offers learning resources to help you get started.

Start Page

Your application can be in Silverlight or XNA. You might be wondering when to use each technology. Silverlight allows you to develop rich internet and out of browser applications and contains device-specific functionality giving you the ability to create a broad range of applications. For game developers, XNA provides a great solution for building games that span from phone to desktop to Xbox 360. When developing your application Visual Studio provides project and item templates to get you started with either Silverlight or XNA projects.

New project

Developing the App

Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone extends the VS design, coding, and debugging capabilities with phone-specific extensions and features. The designer surface is skinned with the phone’s visual theme so you can see how your application will look on the device. As controls are added to the app, they automatically adopt the Windows Phone Design System look and feel. Of course, you can change the style if you prefer a different theme for your application.

Mobile Designer

When you’re ready to run your application, you can use F5 to run it like any other application developed in VS. You can debug your application using the Windows Phone 7 Series emulator. The emulator supports adjusting the orientation and has phone buttons available on the device. Windows Phone 7 Series phones won’t be available until later this year, but the emulator helps you get a head start on developing your apps now.

Emulator

Download the Tools

Starting today you can download the Windows Phone Developer Tools from the Windows Phone or Microsoft Express sites. To learn more about Windows Phone 7 Series development, please visit the Charlie Kindel on Windows Phone Development blog.

Namaste!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2010
    Oh, this is awesome news! I can't wait to get home and try it out.

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2010
    Soma, Now you're talking! :)

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2010
    How soon can we have VB.Net Support? I was very surprised it was not in here already. Having support for VB.Net is very important to us!

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2010
    Hi Steele, We will definitely have support for writing VB.NET apps for Windows Phone 7.  The team is working on the details and the timeline for the same.  Stay tuned. -somasegar

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2010
    I installed the tools and when i tried to debug the loading message do not disappear. I suspect that I installed this tools on a virtual machine. Am I right? Thanks

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2010
    I have read that apps for Windows Phone 7 will only be downloadable from the App Store. How would a company be able to use their own in-house bespoke app on a phone, given that they wouldn't want it shared with the rest of the World?

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2010
    Hi Soma, How is Microsoft going to address the needs of the Enterprise and business customers? I heard that apps for Windows Phone 7 can only be sold and installed from Microsoft App store for Windows Phone 7 after being "certified" by Microsoft. What if developers in businesses want to create proprietary apps for their businesses? How will these apps be deployed to Windows Phone 7?

  • Anonymous
    March 16, 2010
    Hi "Fatal Error Solver", Yes - The Windows Phone 7 emulator is a VM image.   -somasegar

  • Anonymous
    March 16, 2010
    kevinw, I heard in MIX yesterday that developers will be able to deploy apps to their locally connected phone just about as fast as to the emulator. It sounds like you will be able to deploy your app just fine.

  • Anonymous
    March 16, 2010
    Hi "Fatal Erroe Solver" If you have installed Windows Phone 7 Development Tools on a VM, then you could hit this problem when starting the emulator. Please refer to link below and the release notes have more info and that this configuration is not supported in this release. http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/9/2/D926FB38-BB43-4D87-AE5A-1A3391279FAC/ReleaseNotes.htm If need be please contact me at sudeepb at microsoft dot com. Sudeep Bharati

  • Anonymous
    March 16, 2010
    This is cool

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2010
    Soma, I have been waiting a long time for this. Thanks to everyone at Microsoft! Btw, the new Silverlight Worldwide Telescope app for the Silverlight Bing Maps is awesome! It needs some performance improvements, but overall its excellent.

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2010
    Hi Sam, Thanks for the feedback.  I will pass it on to the teams. -somasegar

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2010
    Too Bad Windows Phone 7 Development Tools are not supported on WIN XP even though Visual Studio 2010 RC is.

  • Anonymous
    March 17, 2010
    Hi Kevin, You are right.  WinXP doesn’t support certain technical features that are needed by the Mobile tooling. You need Windows Vista or Windows 7 to be able to use these tools. -somasegar

  • Anonymous
    March 18, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 19, 2010
    Thanks for the answer Sudeep Bharati

  • Anonymous
    March 21, 2010
    Hi Soma, The single and only most important thing that Microsoft needs to improve in Silverlight at this time is PERFORMANCE. It needs to load faster in the browser (for PCs) and I am hoping that Silverlight apps in Windows Phone 7 will load at near the speed of light!

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2010
    Tom and Kevinw: We will be disclosing later in the Spring the mechanisms available for Windows Phone 7 Series customers to distribute applications privately.  Stay tuned... Polita Paulus Microsoft

  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2010
    What if I have an application that is written C++, is there an exception to XNA/Silverlight -- my app is a lightweight XML DB - I have  a.NET API for it, but need it to urn native???

  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2010
    londo, Windows Phone 7 will not run native C++ applications.  You might consider porting your application to Silverlight and XNA. Polita Paulus Microsoft

  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2010
    >> Windows Phone 7 will not run native C++ applications.  You might consider porting your application to Silverlight and XNA. Do you mean we can't write native applications for Windows Phone 7 at all and we should choose either Silverlight or XNA? It's a real big shame.

  • Anonymous
    April 08, 2010
    yes，You might consider porting your application to Silverlight Lucy for you !

  • Anonymous
    April 08, 2010
    Really awesome....was just waiting for dis...and even for Windows Phone 7 to launch offically.... :)

  • Anonymous
    April 09, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    May 03, 2010
    phuff, Not sure if you are still checking this out... but, how are you guys doing with Windows Phone 7 development for distributing applications privately for enterprises? Also, how is Microsoft addressing issues highlighted in this article: http: // arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/05/unlocked-windows-phone-7-image-shows-office-progress.ars

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2010
    Hi Tom- we still don't have anything to share on enterprise app distribution yet, but keep your eye out for news later this Spring. Polita Paulus

  • Anonymous
    June 06, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2010
    Windows Phone 7 Dreamer, the link you provided is for the Windows Mobile 6.5 Marketplace.  You can find the just-announced Windows Phone 7 Marketplace policies here: windowsteamblog.com/.../new-policies-for-next-gen-windows-phone-marketplace.aspx. Polita Paulus Microsoft

  • Anonymous
    September 16, 2010
    I want to use time control in my Mobile app, so how to do it in VS'10 for windows phone, because it doesn't seem that it has timecontrol option.. Help me!!

  • Anonymous
    September 17, 2010
    Adheep, are you looking for a time picker control?  You can find one in the Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit, available here: silverlight.codeplex.com/.../52297. Polita Paulus Microsoft

  • Anonymous
    September 28, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 10, 2010
    Thanks to everyone at Microsoft! Btw, the new Silverlight Worldwide Telescope app for the Silverlight Bing Maps is awesome! It needs some performance improvements, but overall its excellent.Michael from <a href="www.zco.com/windows-phone-7-application-development.aspx">Windows Phone 7 Application Development</a>

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2010
    hi , this tools aren't  support windows xp ? I have windows xp and sp3....

  • Anonymous
    November 05, 2010
    Bill, the Windows Phone developer tools require Windows Vista or Windows 7.  Windows XP is not supported.  Apologies for any inconvenience this causes. Polita Paulus Microsoft

  • Anonymous
    December 13, 2010
    Thats great!! There are a lot of great tutorials on www.yourwindowsphone7.com.

  • Anonymous
    December 29, 2010
    To install Phone 7 Development tools on XP:

  • Download the Web-Installer
  • Run 'vm_web.exe /x'
  • edit baseline.dat
  • under the section [gencomp7788], change these values:    InstallOnLHS from 1 to 0    InstallOnWinXP from 1 to 0
  • Save and close
  • run 'setup.exe /web' NOTE: The Phone Emulator will not install, it will crash on install and at runtime, but the rest of the development tools will install and run fine. Hope this helps.

  • Anonymous
    January 18, 2011
    Thanks for informative post, Soma. We are working on windows phone 7 application development. www.synapse.co.in/.../windows_phone7.shtml

  • Anonymous
    May 26, 2011
    Hi, Article is nice. How to use c cdode in windows phone 7

  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2011
    manohar_227: Windows Phone 7 will not run native C++ applications.  Give Silverlight and XNA a try! Polita Paulus Microsoft

  • Anonymous
    October 15, 2011
    The comment has been removed