I have made one windows phone based application. i want some designing ideas from you wp7 people.how can we apply styles,transparent background or the design which suits wp7 app. may i have some links which provides snaps for good designed apps. please help
One app that jumps to my mind when talking about great use and adaption to the metro design, it's "Cocktail Flow". It has very well done implementations of many design cues for WP7. As special treats it has features like parallax effects controled via gyroscope.
You can find a free version on the marketplace. Definitely worth a look.
MSDN user experience guidelines are pretty good, User Experience Design Guidelines for Windows Phone.
Also, it helps to install some popular apps from the marketplace and study their design.
The BEST thing you can possibly do to get a good idea of how to build a great WP7 app is to own a Windows Phone, and use it as your primary phone.
Get used to the way the operating system flows. Download cool apps. As time goes on you begin to understand from the user's perspective what a "good" app looks (and more importantly) feels like. It's a hard thing to nail down in a "user experience" spec. I find that a lot of people who set off to build a WP7 app do so before understanding how apps are supposed to behave on the platform. It is vital that you understand how users expect applications on the windows phone to operate. If you use a windows phone for a good 3-4 months, and really make an effort of butting it through the steps, it will be hard to walk away from that experience without a very clear idea of what a "good" application looks like for the windows phone.
That being said, and while I honestly don't believe that there are any short cuts to good design for the windows phone, I highly recommend downloading the following apps, and playing around with them to get a feel for "good" UI:
Wordament
Cocktail Flow (previously mentioned)
Twitter
Spotify
Yelp
Any of the built in applications (Office, Zune, Internet Explorer)
The above are good to start with, but again, you're really not going to understand it unless you live and breath it everyday for at least a few months.
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I dont know enough about smart watches but i figure that at some point, browsing web sites on them will become a standard feature. The "Web Browser for Android Wear" app on google play has more than 100,000 downloads and the "WebBrowser for SmartWatch" app has more than 10,000
To that end, given that smart watches like Sony's SmartWatch 3 has a 1.6” screen, what should web designers need to take into consideration when making their web pages as portable as possible? Is there a set of standards? What kind of functionality and behaviour should one expect of a page displayed in a smart watch browser?
Although SO isn't the best place for this question, I'll chip in. As far as I know, designing for wearables is still a new thing, and as per say, I haven't come across any standards as such.
But I think responsive web design should do just fine.
People are working on designing websites for smart watches. Here.
However, think about using the standard manufacturer APIs to build more robust and interactive experiences than just relying on websites on tiny screens.
Here's an article from Net Tuts+ that shows you how to design for the Apple Watch using existing web technologies. Bear in mind it doesn't beat native at all.
I'm looking to get a windows phone to use as a development platform. What should I consider when comparing models? I'm not interested in opinions about individual phones, but about what features I should make sure exist.
I would recommend one with gyroscope and front facing camera, to be able to test the features of the last WP7 handsets. But overall, it's pretty good to develop on the slowest phone you can find. This way, you make sure that your app will provide good user experience on pretty much all available devices.
I'm a developer most comfortable with web languages (PHP, Javascript etc.). Now, My company wants to start making iPad apps for pharma sales reps that basically gives a nice introduction to drugs.
We used to subcontract it but we want to bring it in house. It's a very big plus for me financially if I can take on the jobs and do them right. Now doing my research, these apps aren't crazy; they just kinda need to act like a powerpoint slideshow with a little animation and interaction.
I don't know Cocoa. I know there will also be a learning curve with it as well. I do know Sencha slightly. Does anyone here have any experience with either of these platforms and do you think it's a "might as well learn cocoa" type of thing? The only reason I like Sencha is becuase you program in Web languages and can port it to app stores. Any ideas? Suggestions?
My answer is always just to learn Cocoa in situations like this, but Sencha is actually surprising not-bullshit. I'm really impressed with it.
However, I wanted to note a few things: I don't know exactly what you mean by "port it to app stores", but I want to be sure you don't delude yourself into thinking than an app written with Sencha would be usable on any platform other than iPad. Of course you could load a page written in Sencha on non-iPad device, but the entire point of Sencha is tailoring your web application to work surprisingly well on an iPad. So, it will be out of place anywhere else, and given the quality of current iPad competitors, it'd be unlikely to perform adequately off of the iPad at this time.
So, if you want to use Sencha, it has to be for the right reasons (of which there are two):
You want more flexibility in deployment: you don't want to have to deal with Apple's Enterprise deployment system. Apple's not interested in apps that only pertain to one company (internal software) on the App Store, so if you want to go the Cocoa route, you'll have to use their Enterprise Ad-Hoc deployment.
You don't want to / can't afford to take the time and learn Cocoa (really, to make an app that doesn't sucks will probably take at least a year of experience, trial and error, etc.; at least, that's how it was for me).
If either one of these things is true, I'd go the Sencha route. But as an advocate of iOS, I really hope you take the time and learn Cocoa! I believe I speak for all the Cocoa developers on Stack Overflow when I say that we'd be happy to help you with any questions you may have as you go. Good luck, whatever you decide!
What Windows Phone 7 demo/reference applications have you seen which really made you interested in developing for the platform?
I know of Scott Gu's Twitter example and Foursquare. Also see here for MIX10 demo apps.
Other than developing games and re-creating functionality already present on other mobile platforms (iPhone, BlackBerry, Android), is there any good reference material and business benefits of developing for Windows Phone 7? Does the Silverlight dev environment really offer an advantage over what is already out there? My gut feeling is that this is definitely the case, but it will take some time for the platform to establish itself, if it does.
You can find a lot of examples and reference applications here www.reddit.com/r/wp7dev/ or search using the hashtag #wp7dev on twitter (full disclosure - some of my examples appear there).
There a examples of what people are openly working on, but one can assume it is a lot more - hopefully this is useful, as it shows what can be done, or is being done on the platform.
As a novice developer, other phone platforms came with a lot of overhead required to build even the simplest application. The fact that XNA will be available for game development is a huge thing for me, it means I can create simple games for me and my friends without having to spend time learning a new language or setting up awkward SDK's and deployment settings.
More advanced developers may scoff at that, but development tools that are already being used that can work right out of the box for the intended platform is important for the hobbyists. I think this will open up a huge arena for homemade games and apps just like XNA did for 360 development.
It should also help sales. I will buy a Windows 7 phone because of this, and I can imagine others will do the same. As it stands, I am going to port my existing XNA games over so I can play them on the go. It will be cool to show people at the office, airport, etc. projects I have made right on the spot, and even give them the option to play if they have the right hardware.
Obviously it's early days, I do not know whether this is information that is in the public domain or not yet, but...
I have trawled through some of this site - http://www.windowsphone7series.com/ but I can't seem to find the answer.
Specifically will I be able to write an app on the phone that updates the cloud with the phones current GPS position in the background even when other apps are running in the foreground.
According to ZDNet's post yesterday, Windows Mobile 7 will support multitasking for things like having music playing while using an application, but as far as 3rd party it will most likely not be supported. Things like notifications however will be there, as to help with multitasking.
I hate to relieve myself on your bonfire Christopher but might I suggest that a background GPS process, might not be a good idea. You'd really run down the users battery performance, perhaps if you shared a little more about your idea we could suggest an alternative architecture that didn't require a constant gps post.