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“There’s a lot of “surface area” to the Windows Phone 7 Series platform, so I thought I’d make sure everyone knew where the developer documentation for Windows Phone 7 Series was, and give you highlights of what’s available. Keep in mind that the Windows Phone developer documentation was written for the CTP (Community Technology Preview) and that it will be expanded as we get closer to final release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools. We’ll also be doing much more to “bring it together” so that blog posts like this are not as necessary” Charlie Kindel of Microsoft blogged earlier this week.
Windows Phone 7 Series development starts with a single download of tools, runtimes, and phone emulator. The end-to-end application development environment includes a familiar Microsoft Visual Studio IDE, Windows Phone 7 Series Marketplace, and optionally Expression Blend. The supported runtimes are Silverlight, XNA Framework, and .NET Compact Framework. The application platform is running on Windows Phone OS 7.0 CTP, which is focused on the consumer, the information they care about, and entertainment experiences.
Windows Phone 7 Series Application Platform is a new application platform focused on supporting consumer entertainment experiences running on Windows Phone OS 7.0 CTP. It is built upon Microsoft technologies such as Silverlight, XNA Framework and the .NET Compact Framework. Developers already familiar with those technologies and their related tools will be able to create new Windows Mobile applications for Windows Phone OS 7.0 CTP without a steep learning curve.
Two frameworks are available for developing applications:
- A Silverlight UI framework for event-driven, XAML-based application development – Windows Phone Application Platform provides developers with the full richness of Silverlight to develop creative mark-up based user experiences.
- An XNA UI framework for loop-based games – Windows Phone Application Platform provides developers with the full power of the XNA Framework gaming environment, enabling immersive and fun gaming and entertainment experiences.
Your first stop should be MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network for those of you new to the MS world), where Microsoft has the bulk of Windows Phone development documentation. There’s all sorts of great stuff here, including:
- Code Samples for Windows Phone
- An Application Platform Overview for Windows Phone that covers how all the pieces fit together
- A Getting Started Guide for Developing for Windows Phone that includes everything you need to create your first Silverlight or XNA Framework application
- A Programming Guide for Windows Phone with overviews of features and how to guides with code snippets
- The Class Library Reference for Windows Phone
Other important documentation links include Developing Windows Phone Games and Silverlight for Windows Phone as a part of the XNA Game Studio 4.0 and Silverlight 4 RC documentation sets, respectively
