Interested in listening in on general chat by Windows Phone 7 developers. Anyone know of non-Microsoft forums? A Microsoft one would be okay unless the developers in there feel sort of obliged not to be critical.
I'm preparing to work on an infamous mobile app and whilst iPhone & Android are obviously on the list, I'm interested in whether WP7 offers anything enticing.
Thanks, Rob.
By far the biggest and most popular forums are the official Microsoft ones.
The next busiest (in my experience) is here on Stack Overflow.
If you're interested in what non-developers are saying about the platform have a look at the forums on Backstage.
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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.
I'm trying AdMob control for Windows Phone 7.
When my application starts, everything freezes until AdMob gets an ad.
Of course this is super annoying and a blocker bug for me. It seems it is doing a synchronous call using the UI thread. Is that the case?
Is there a way to avoid this?
UPDATE: Many months later and still the same problem. The funny thing is that if you try to complain in admob forum, your post is automatically deleted.
Shame on you, Google...
Kindly try http://wp7adrotator.codeplex.com/ if you want to go for ads from admob. Cause Admob provides a bad fill rate in Windows Phones and you might want to use other accounts too i.e. Microsoft Advertising SDK. Plus this solves all unresolved admob control issues too.
If you want to dig in more you might want to look at this blog post:
http://briankassay.com/blog/?p=169
You can also look for Nokia Ad Exchange too.
I hope this would help you. I used Adroator on my The Bro Code App on Windows Phone store from NerdCats
Why don't you use the native Microsoft Advertising SDK control? It works perfectly on Windows Phones.
I am an android developer and now I am trying to learn Mango too. What are the SDK, system requirements, IDE required to start development?
Also I am from a Java background so I know that apps for windows phone can be developed using C#. So please guide me how to set up a development environment and start development on Mango.
Everything you need to know is right here at Microsoft App Hub. Click on "Download the free tools. Get started now."
An important thing to know is that you have to be registered with App Hub which takes some time (they will be checking your ID) and costs some money (99$ the last time I checked). You need this to debug on your device and to publish to the Marketplace.
For you as an Android developer the Windows Phone Guide for Android Developers will be helpful.
The Channel 9 jump start sessions are also quite good as well as their training course for beginners. Apart from that there is plenty of information in the web right now and the MS documentation and tutorials are really good. Keep googling, you'll find them.
Regarding the xp question, I think the emulator requires at least Windows Vista, so if your employer limits you to xp, you are out of luck (in this respect also :-)
Apple has a corporate developer program with an elevated licensing cost, does Microsoft provide such a service for Windows Phone 7 developers?
This was asked at a recent MS event. You can assign (I think 5) phones to developer unlock them, then load application directly/bypass the marketplace.
Also, there were talks that they are hoping to soon allow beta/redemption codes to allow limited deployment of your application to non-unlocked phones, bypassing testing/marketplace acceptance.... But I do not know the status of this.
The best thing you can do at the moment is develop your application as normal and have a password/login screen at startup. This is a horrible approach, but it does work.
At the moment, the phone is very much targeted towards consumers.
I'm not sure what is provided in the Apple Enterprise version, but so far Microsoft only has the one registration process and no private app distribution: you can distribute apps on the market to everyone, or by giving your xap file to people with dev-unlocked phones, nothing in between.
The official line is NO, not yet.
Windows Phone 7 was created, first and foremost, for consumers, not enterprise customers.
That being said, LOTS of people are asking for this and Microsoft have said they will address this in the future. No timescales or details have yet been announced yet.
This will likely be related to the way that beta testing and home brew distribution are implemented. (Just my assumption.)
I don't know why I can't just comment on another answer in this thread, so my apologies for placing these remarks in an answer.
I think MS needs to really make this happen since it could be the saving grace for WP7. While I personally feel that my experience with WP7 and my Samsung Focus have been just as good or better than that with the second-gen iPod Touch that I have, there are a lot of people who aren't convinced. For better or worse, it really is the ecosystem that matters and MS has that within the corporate world.
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.