So you want to create your dream app with Windows Phone

First thing first. Go directly to the link on this page and download the developer tools(this is a beta). You can use it with VS2010. How? May be I will write about it in my next post. Make sure you read the documentation and the guide.

You want to build a web site for Phone browsers. You can do it, and you can find the details at the same link.

You can get a bunch of other resources here as well.

http://developer.windowsphone.com/windows-phone-7/

Must read article if you are developing for Windows

Connection string is the entry point to develop any data-centric application that includes handheld or mobile platform. It really is the first step. If you are accessing SQL Server Compact then this article tells you all that you need to know about connecting to SQL Server Compact from Visual Studio, be it the latest VS2010 or an older data tecnnology.

Check out this article and let me know if you liked it.

http://www.packtpub.com/article/connecting-microsoft-sql-server-compact-3.5-visual-studio

After connecting you can develop a Pocket PC forms application as shown in this article on the same site:
http://www.packtpub.com/article/pocket-pc-application-visual-studio-2005 


Here is an abstract of the above article:
This article by Dr. Jayaram Krishnaswamy teaches how you may create a .NET Compact Framework (CF) 2.0 forms application. This can be used with Pocket PC 2003, or later devices. In the absence of a device being available for testing, the emulator is the next best thing. The application will be tested on one of the many emulators available in Visual Studio 2005. You may try other devices as well just by choosing the item in the Device Emulation Manager described in the article.

You better get started on XAML

Microsoft Windows Phone is getting serious

A new training kit was released recently.
You have to know XAML if you are thinking of developing for Windows Phone. No XAML No Windows Phone.

The program comes with an emulator built in. In earlier versions you needed to download emulators and it was an hassle.

I tried out a couple of samples provided in the kit. Here is a slightly modified Hello World sample screen shots.
This is the UI you design in the Main page which is in XAML

The
keyboard is built in.













You enter your text in the text box after bringing up the emulator and type in your text using the soft keyboard. You may need to navigate to have the full functionality of the keyboard.
You get somehting like this typed in.
There is a little bit of code behind to hook it up to the click event.

Now I click. Voila! the phone displays the message.