Beginning Windows® Phone 7 Application Development: Building Windows® Phone Applications Using Silverlight® and XNA®

SUMMARY

This chapter provides a brief history of Windows Phone 7. You learned how this platform has evolved over time and how fierce competition from Google and Apple led to Microsoft redesigning its entire mobile operating system from the ground up.

You also learned how Windows Phone 7 differs from Windows Mobile in fundamental ways, starting with the hardware specification. Instead of allowing for just about any hardware configuration cellphone providers could come up with, Microsoft has created a strict set of minimum requirements that must be met in every Windows Phone 7 device. Thanks to these requirements, you don't need to develop applications and port them over to a myriad of devices.

You learned about the various pieces that make up the architecture of the Windows Phone 7 platform: the runtime components, cloud services, portal services, and tools.

In this chapter, you also got an overview of how the new Windows Phone Marketplace allows users to easily find and install your apps.

You walked through the installation of the free developer tools. After taking a quick tour of Visual Studio 2010, you created your first Windows Phone 7 application. Finally, after compiling and building your new “Hello, World” app, you ran and tested the program by using the emulator software, which allows you to see how your finished application will look when it's deployed to actual device hardware.

EXERCISES

1. True or False: Windows Phone development requires the use of Visual Studio 2010 Professional ...