Usman ur Rehman Ahmed's blog

 

Downloading Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools

I just finished downloading of “Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools”. Following items are downloaded and installed,

                1- DirectX Libraries

                2- Microsoft Windows Phone Emulator x 86

                3- Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Resources

                4- Microsoft Windows Phone Developer Tools - ENU

                5- Windows Phone 7 Add-in for Visual Studio 2010 -ENU

                6- Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0

                7- Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0 Windows Phone Extensions

                8- Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010

                9- Microsoft Expression Blend 4 for Windows

Downloading_tools
However if any of above features already exists on the system, it is skipped.

 

Filed under: add-in developer directx emulator expression blend tools windows phone 7 xna game studio
 

Getting Started with Windows Phone 7 Development

Windows Phone 7 is to going to create hype in the market in coming days since recently collaboration between Nokia and Microsoft was made as a resultant of which Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system will be running on top of Nokia’s hardware. Also Windows Phone 7 allows development in .NET in a more controlled environment which is going to make the process of creating mobile phone apps as well as games a lot easier.

I am from Pakistan and I can tell you that out of every 10 mobile phone consumers, 7 are carrying Nokia sets with them. This powered by the fact that Nokia is to launch the Windows Phone 7 supported models in year 2011 and 2012 will bring a boost in developer market. Since there is a healthy competition already in the web development domain, it is encouraging for young developers to take a shift in paradigm and get hands on Windows Phone 7 development.

Keeping this under consideration, in this first tutorial I will take a look at setting up the environment for Windows Phone 7 development.

Note:

Before we begin please understand that there are two domains available for Windows Phone 7 development,

1-      Silverlight based mobile applications development

2-      XNA Game Studio based mobile games development

I will speak on each of these in more detail in a coming blog post.

Programming Language Barrier

Please note that C# is the recommended language for development of Windows Phone 7. VB .NET is supported for development of Silverlight based applications (using an extension kit Visual Basic CTP for Windows Phone Developer Tools to be installed after RTW package); there is no support currently for XNA Game Studio or Expression Blend for Windows 7 with VB .NET.

Pre-Requisite to Developer Tools

-          One of the required tools (Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone) for windows phone 7 can’t be installed on Windows XP. You need to be at-least running on Windows Vista or preferably Windows 7. Trying to do so will stop installation with following prompt,

Windows_phone_7_required
Contrary to that, XNA Game studio as a standalone package can be installed on Windows XP.

-          Please ensure you have Visual Studio 2010 installed. If you are running on top of Visual Studio 2008, upgrade to 2010 first before continuing.

Required Developer Tools

Next you need to have Windows Phone 7 RTW installed on your system. At the time of this writing you can get this from,

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=04704acf-a63a-4f97-952c-8b51b34b00ce&displaylang=en

With Windows Phone 7 RTW you get a bunch of tools,

-          Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone  (Not required if already running on Visual Studio 2010 Professional or Ultimate)

-          Windows Phone Emulator

-          Silverlight for Windows Phone

-          XNA 4.0 Game Studio

As mentioned above you might intend to install XNA Game Studio 4.0 alone. It is available as a stand along package at,

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9ac86eca-206f-4274-97f2-ef6c8b1f478f

Review

Tool

Purpose

Separately Available

Windows XP Support

VB .NET support

Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone

Mobile Applications Development

No

No

Yes

Windows Phone Emulator

No

Silverlight SDK for Windows Phone

Yes

Expression Blend for Windows Phone

Yes

No

XNA 4.0 Game Studio

Mobile Games Development

Yes

Yes

No

 Package for VB .NET can be found at,

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=a808a69d-6119-47b7-b858-262be5c49915&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MicrosoftDownloadCenter+%28Microsoft+Download+Center%29

 

Reference Reading: http://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/getting_started

Filed under: VB .NET c# expression blend game visual sutdio windows phone 7 xna
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