Hello and Welcome to the first post of our Windows Phone 7 Development Series - In this post we will introduce you to the tools we will be using for the development of Windows Phone 7 applications
To get started - We would advise you to download the following tools from here in the same order as mentioned.
First Download Windows Phone 7 Developer tools 7.0 and install it.
After you are done installing the SDK , Install the Update patch.
And when you are done with it , Install the Windows Phone Developer Tools Fix.
If you have a Windows Phone 7 Device , Read this and this.
Note : We would be working on Windows Phone 7 developer tools 7.0 and later in the workshop shift to 7.1 SDK . The reason being that 7.1 Developer tools are in Beta mode and any application developed using them cannot be submitted to the App Hub.
1) Visual Studio 2010 Express : We would be using the Visual Studio 2010 Express IDE for developing Windows Phone 7 apps. Windows Phone 7 Development won't happen on earlier versions. You can use other versions of Visual Studio 2010 like Professional and Ultimate ( If you are a student , Check out DreamSpark program from Microsoft where you can get Development tools for free )
2) Windows Phone Emulator : The apps you develop will be deployed on the Windows Phone Emulator for testing . Until recently , the emulator did not support Geo Location and Accelerometer . With Windows Phone 7.1 Beta tools , it has been fixed.
3) Silverlight : Silverlight is the base application framework for Windows Phone 7 Applications. Silverlight can access the unique features of Windows Phone 7 and helps developers build graphically appealing applications.
4) XNA Game Studio 4.0 : The XNA Game Studio 4.0 is used for developing Games for Windows based PC's , X-Box Consoles and obviously Windows Phone 7.
5) Microsoft Expression Blend for Windows Phone 7 : The Expression Blend helps you to create a rich UI experience for your end user. It smoothly integrates with Visual Studio so you can design the UI in Blend and code in Visual Studio.
Throughout the series , we will be using many controls and add-ons. Link to the same will be provided in the article itself.
So, what are you waiting for ? Go ahead and download these tools . In our next post , we will start with the standard "Hello World" application.
