On Women’s Day PixelMat Open Sources One of Their WindowsPhoneApps; Toddler ABCs
On the 11th of February, 2012 Microsoft Bangalore and YourStory.in organized an app development workshop, for women developers. Over 50 women developers flexed their coding muscles at the interactive workshop by Harish Vaidyanathan, Director of Evangelism at Microsoft.
PixelMat Software had participated in this workshop and started developing Windows Mobile Apps post this. They have already created 3 apps for the Windows Mobile platform.“We at PixelMat are now happy to give back to the community. On the occasion of Women's Day, we are open-sourcing 1 of our 3 Windows Phone apps, Toddler ABCs. Everything including the source code, art and sounds will be available to developers to tweak and customize,” said Srividya, co-founder, PixelMat.
Toddler ABCs is an app for children to learn about letters, letter sounds and object sounds. The app interface is colorful and engaging and is available for download free of cost on the Windows Phone Marketplace. The app was released on the 9th of February on the Windows Phone Marketplace and in less than a month Toddler ABCs has got close to 1000 downloads.
Here are some of the instructions that you need to follow to optimally utilize the resources that PixelMat will make available:
Pre-requisites
- You need to have a good knowledge of programming environments and should have worked with Microsoft Visual Studio
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone should be installed on your PC/Laptop. You can get it for free here.
- Microsoft® Silverlight® Toolkit should also be installed. You can get it for free here.
- It is also recommended to have Microsoft® Silverlight® 5 Tools for Visual Studio® 2010 SP1. You can get it for free here.
- You may also need to install Visual Web Developer Express 2010
Source Code Download
- Download the source code here. File size is 2MB.
- Extract the archive contents in a new folder directly under C:.
- Locate in the sub-folders and then double-click the ‘Toddler ABCs.sln’ file, let Visual Studio get invoked and check the project references and ensure that all needed references are resolved correctly.
Now just run the app!
Speaking about why PixelMat decided to take such an initiative, Srividya said, “Gals (and perhaps the guys as well) can easily learn how to create a Silverlight app for Windows Phone that uses images, sounds, touch responses etc.” She further added that Toddler ABCs is a bright and colorful multimedia app that teaches the English alphabet and comes with touch activated sound effects and page swiping/flicking. It is ideal for someone who is beginning work on the Windows Phone and needs a simple, real-world project to kick-start their efforts. “It’s a good ‘starter-app’ template for creating multi-page apps,” said Srividya.
Srividya is really exicited to see how developers use the source code and customize the app. “We would really like to see remixes of the app. Maybe someone will create apps in our native languages - a Kannada or Hindi alphabet app. Or replace the sound files with their own voice recordings to create a personalized alphabet tutorial. Or maybe change the artwork with their own creation,” said Srividya.
The images are sourced from OpenClipart and the sounds from the FreeSound Project, so there is no issue with copyright.
PixelMat is also working on a rapid app creation tool that will make pure native creation easy and fun.
For further details you can get in touch with PixelMat on [email protected]
Watch out this space for more updates about PixelMat.
