Last week I attended to Windows Phone 7 Development workshop at Taylor’s University which was from Nokia Developers and Microsoft Malaysia. The event starts with an introduction about Windows Phone 7 platform and its amazing features. The first feature and the most unique one among the other phone platforms is the Live Tiles which shows the applications and the number of the pending notifications of each app. It also updates base on any changes in the application and its content. For example, you can create an application for the weather to display the current weather, as the weather changes the live tile will changes and displays the current weather condition in form of graphic and text.
Comparing to other phone platforms, Windows Phone 7 use the simple and flat images as the Tiles (Icons) but you still can choose an image as your application’s tile. The simplicity of the live tile will prevent any confusion for user to understand the app content. One of the criteria of developing and publishing an app to Windows Phone Marketplace is to choose the best image (should be related to app) as the tile.
In Windows Phone 7, the user experience improved a lot even when you compare it with other existing phone operating systems, you will find out it’s very easy to use Windows Phone. As managing and arranging the contents on the phone size screen is very difficult and important, in Windows Phone there are different layout controls which are flexible and simple to use for developers. If the existing controls are not enough, you still can add more by downloading the Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit.
Microsoft tried hard to provide wonderful tools for developers and make the life easier for them. Most of the developers are worried about the testing phase of their app which they are required to buy the actual device to test the application. Microsoft provide an Emulator for Windows Phone which can simulate most of the real device functionality and features like faking the phone calls, accelerometer and lots of other things which I leave it to you to discover.
To start making apps for Windows Phone 7, you need to install Visual Studio 2010 with Service Pack 1. Also you need to install Windows Phone SDK 7.1 and after that you are ready to make amazing apps. If you are powerful programmer, you may want to use Visual Studio and if you are more like a designer, you need to use Expression Blend which offers lots of options to create good looking apps. If you need more than just normal apps with good graphics, Microsoft allows you to use XNA for 3D graphics and animations.
Combining Silverlight and XNA to create apps for phone? Real 3D objects in apps?
If you still don’t believe it’s an amazing phone platform, why don’t you give a try and see it yourself?!
