Basic App Development for the Windows Phone

Ujwal Kumar, a partner consultant with Microsoft, demonstrated a basic-level application development for the Windows Phone at the Phone camp organized in Hyderabad on 28th January. Using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Ujwal created a simple application, titled, "Hello World," in a few minutes. A beginner developer would find the design aspect of Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango) quite simple.

The Windows phone provides tool kit templates for silverlight and xna. Additional silverlight toolkit for Windows is available for free download. It supports two languages, C sharp and dot net.

A panoramic view for applications on the screen shows the design view and code at the same time. Ujwal noted, "Games are the top selling applications on any phone device. It's very simple to design 2D and 3D games using xna and silverlight on Mango." A game designed using xna can be used on other platforms. Ujwal then built a game application on xna, using silverlight UI controls. He demonstrated the smooth rendering in xna, with no lag time.

A key criteria for building applications is the time taken to load the phone emulator, ideally less than 5 seconds. Silverlight, with minimal graphics controls, loads the Windows Phone Emulator quickly. When the user wants to start designing the game, they can add content. Real time editing and debugging on visual studio, with the phone emulator open is available on the Visual Studio program available for free with Mango. 

A developer has to first unlock the Windows phone and register on marketplace. More information is available here.