Windows Phone Developer Resources
These resources provide a more in-depth look into Windows Phone application development.
Forums
- The App Hub discussion forums (opens in new tab) are a good place to ask general Windows Phone programming questions.
Documentation
- Windows Phone Development (opens in new tab) on MSDN
- Windows Phone Class Library Reference (opens in new tab)
- Silverlight Class Library Reference (opens in new tab)
- App Hub’s Aggregation of Useful Documentation Links (opens in new tab)
Tutorials
- The Windows Phone 7 Development for Absolute Beginners (opens in new tab) site has a series of tutorial videos explaining everything from how to download the tools to how to program in C#.
- For more experienced programmers who are simply new to Windows Phone, a more in-depth Windows Phone Training Course (opens in new tab) is also available.
Books
- The ebook from Microsoft Press: Programming Windows Phone 7, is free from Microsoft Press (opens in new tab). The ebook’s sample code is also available for download in both C# and Microsoft Visual Basic.
- Various books on Windows Phone 7 development are available through popular retailers (Alpha XR (opens in new tab), Barnes & Noble (opens in new tab)).
Downloads
- Some code samples (opens in new tab) for Windows Phone.
- Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit (opens in new tab) adds some additional UI controls for Windows Phone application development. The source code is also available.
Windows Phone Marketplace
You can submit your completed application (opens in new tab) to the Windows Phone Marketplace throught App Hub (opens in new tab). Students may submit a limited amount of apps free of charge (see the App Hub FAQ (opens in new tab)).
About the Windows Azure Platform
Project Hawaii provides project participants with access to Windows Azure for use in creating their own cloud services. Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud services platform, and provides computation, database and other capabilities hosted in the cloud.
Use the Windows Azure toolkit for Windows Phone 7 (opens in new tab) to build Windows Phone 7 applications that take advantage of cloud services running in Windows Azure.
Learn more:
- Online Library Entry (opens in new tab) for the Windows Azure Platform on MSDN
- ASP.NET Portal (opens in new tab) on MSDN, for information on creating web applications and services by using the Microsoft .NET Framework
There are MSDN community support forums for Windows Azure (opens in new tab), SQL Azure (opens in new tab), and App Fabric (opens in new tab).
Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone
The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone makes it easier for you to build mobile applications that take advantage of cloud services running in Windows Azure. This toolkit includes Visual Studio project templates for Windows Phone and Windows Azure, class libraries optimized for use on the phone, sample applications, and documentation. All this content is designed to be easily reused, simplifying your experience and optimizing your time when building your own phone applications leveraging cloud services.
- Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone (opens in new tab)
This toolkit includes the following services:
- Computation
Using Windows Azure to provide compute servers in the cloud. - Storage
Using Windows Azure to provide virtual SQL databases in the cloud.
Additional Development Tools
Microsoft offers many of its professional development tools and other software to students at no charge on the MSDN Academic Alliance (opens in new tab) and Microsoft DreamSpark (opens in new tab) programs.
The available tools include Visual Studio 2010 Professional edition, which in comparison with the Express edition, includes more features and also allows for extensibility add-ins and external tools. As one example, programmers who are familiar with the Emacs text editor on other platforms will likely appreciate the Emacs Emulation extension (opens in new tab).