Gettings started with WP7 development

Thought I'd jot down some things I found useful getting started with Windows Phone 7 development

• Firstly, you'll need the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK (for "Mango") which you can get from http://create.msdn.com/en-US/
  • Connect: Windows Phone Developer Tools not supported on Windows Server 2008
  • How to install the Windows Phone Developer Tools on Windows Server 2008
• After which I've spent time coming up to speed with Silverlight, MVVM, the phone controls and a largely asynchronous programming model.
• Have a read through 31 days of Windows Phone 7 to get a good overview of the development environment, controls, etc...
• The Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit adds a number of controls that are lacking from the core framework. It's also available via NuGet.
• Rather than using raw IsolatedStorage consider using Sterling NoSQL Database.
  Sterling for Isolated Storage on Windows Phone 7
• Alternatively, Mango has SQL CE built in.
  Local Database Overview for Windows Phone
  Windows Phone Mango Local Database: mapping and database operations
• Submitting a Windows Phone 7 Application to the Market.
• Once submitted, it can take 2 or 3 days for an application to clear the Certification step after is it Signed and encrypted. I guess they need someone to install and manually test that the application meets the marketplace requirements.

Tips

• Using a physical keyboard with the WP7 emulator
• You can't at present update the application tile frequently enough to make something like a clock.
• Ensure you test your application with both the light and the dark background themes to ensure the buttons etc... are visible.
  I've been caught out by using images for buttons than only worked on the dark background. By using a canvas to draw the images instead I was able to handle the background change based on a phone brush.
• A Custom Font can be used to create monochrome icons that can easily scale. E.g. http://fontstruct.com/
• Beware when you are submitting the app that you will be using Silverlight forms, so your web browsers built in spell checker probably won't pick up your mistakes.
• Take screenshots of the running app after detaching the debugger. Then the performance counters won't appear.
• Remember to increment at least the Minor Version number in the AssemblyInfo.cs before resubmitting the xap.
• Save space by compressing Content and then extracting it with something like REALLY small unzip utility for Silverlight

See Also:

• Short training videos
• How can I simulate multi-touch in the Windows Phone 7 emulator?