Dave Bost

With the excitement over the Windows Phone 7 Series, developers are chomping at the bit to start building apps. Although were a few months away from releasing Windows Phone 7 Series to the world, now is a good time as any to start ramping up our developer muscle to build amazing applications targeting the new Windows Phone.

I’m happy to announce the first (which I’m sure there will be many) Windows Phone DevCamp coming to Chicago on April 10th.

This DevCamp will start the day off by providing a walk through of the the development tools including Visual Studio and Expression Blend. From there, attendees will break off into groups to hash out their phone applications. At the end of the day, each team will be given an opportunity to showcase their ideas.

Who: Developers, Designers, Mobile Enthusiasts and Entrepreneurs

What: Windows Phone 7 DevCamp

When: Saturday, April 10, 2010 @ 8:30am – ? (map)

Where: ITA, 200 S. Wacker, Chicago, IL.

Register Here

Announcements, Windows Phone, training

I’m happy to announce the next Chicago Code Camp will be taking place on May 1st at IIT Campus in (where else?) Chicago. I threw out the challenge to the planning committee to make this event stand out on the map of Code Camps taking place all over the world. It’s an event for the whole technology community in and around Chicago. To make this event GREAT, we want *YOU*. We want you to speak. We want you to participate. We want you to engage. Share your ideas. Share your interests. Share your passion. Code Camps are all about sharing and learning amongst your peers.

Call for Speakers

The Call for Speakers has gone out. If you would like to share your passion, submit a talk or two (or more). We would like to have a diverse set of technologies addressed on the camp’s agenda. Including areas such as .NET, Java, Ruby, PERL, Python, ActionScript, Flash, iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, Web, Mobile, etc., etc., etc.

Before submitting your session, be sure to read the Code Camp Manifesto and pay particular attention to the part about “No Fluff only Code”.

Although we’d like to accept all submissions, the logistics and size of venue keeps us from doing so. The planning committee will work to make sure they have a balanced agenda covering the depth of technologies that makes for the best Code Camp possible. This is also reliant, of course, on people submitting a range of topic ideas.

Submit your session ideas now!

Announcements, Community, training

Well…this is new to me. Maybe its not new to you, but I’ll gladly share anyhow.

I was watching a talk given at MIX by Mike Harsh on Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight and I was intrigued by his first demo where he showed the effects of applying an InputScope definition to a TextBox control and how it effected what implementation of the Soft Input Panel (sip or keyboard) was shown. InputScope has existed in the .NET Framework since v3.0 but I’ve never had cause to use it, or run across it for any purpose for that matter. After watching Mike’s presentation, I’ve come to the realization that all of us building Windows Phone apps will soon become very intimate with InputScope.

As opposed to spending my time writing up what I’ve learned, I decided to take a crack at producing a quick video walkthrough of InputScope, in its simplest form, as it relates to Silverlight for Windows Phone 7.

I highly recommend watching Mike’s talk as well as the Part 2 follow-up by Peter Torr to learn more about building Windows Phone 7 applications with Silverlight. Mike was kind enough to provide all of the source code for his demos as well as the slide deck over on his blog.

What other samples would you like to see? What questions do you have for building Windows Phone 7 apps with Silverlight?

Silverlight, Windows Phone

Now that the veil has finally been lifted, I can *finally* talk about our plans around Windows Phone 7 development. To kick things off, I thought it might be best to share some resources with you to help you get started down the Windows Phone 7 Series development path.

There is a tremendous amount of excitement and buzz that has been generated from our recent announcements with Windows Phone 7, culminating in last weeks announcements at MIX that the developer/designer tools will be FREE. Yes… FREE!

A few notes upfront first…For the design tools, there are 3 separate packages that need to be downloaded and installed. The Expression tools team wanted to get all the bits to everyone as soon as possible but didn’t have the time to create a single package for all of the necessary bits. You will need all 3 packages to get all of the features to build Windows Phone 7 applications with Expression Blend. If you’re not going to crack open Expression Blend, than no worries. These packages aren’t required if you’re just installing the Dev Tools. 

Also, be sure to read the Developer Tools release notes. There is some important information in there regarding potential install issues as well as a few bugs that exist in the tooling at this time. One of the leading questions people ask is, will the tools run in a virtualized environment. The short answer is – No. However, I have the tools running in a BootToVHD setup I have running on one of my development machines. Scott Hanselman provides a great writeup on how to get a BootToVHD environment up and running.

Here’s what you need to start building Windows Phone 7 Series applications and games…

Tools:

• Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (be sure to read the Release Notes)
       includes:
       – Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP
       – Windows Phone Emulator CTP
       – Silverlight for Windows Phone CTP
       – XNA 4.0 Game Studio CTP
• Expression Blend 4 Beta
• Microsoft Expression Blend Add-in Preview for Windows Phone
• Microsoft Expression Blend SDK Preview for Windows Phone

Learning Resources:

• Windows Phone for Developers
• Windows Phone Developer Documentation on MSDN
• Code Samples
• Developer Guides:
  • Application Platform Overview for Windows Phone
  • Windows Phone UI Design and Interaction Guide
  • Designing Web Sites for Phone Browsers
• Download a preview of Charles Petzold’s new book – Programming Windows Phone 7 Series
• MIX Sessions on Windows Phone:
  • Changing our Game – an Introduction to Windows Phone 7 Series (Joe Belfiore)
  • Authoring for Windows Phone, Silverlight 4 and WPF 4 with Expression Blend (Christian Schormann, Peter Blois)
  • Overview of the Windows Phone 7 Series Application Platform (Charlie Kindel)
  • Windows Phone UI and Design Language (Chad Roberts, michael Smuga, Albert Shum)
  • Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight, Part 1 (Mike Harsh)
  • Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight, Part 2 (Peter Torr)
  • Windows Phone Application Platform Architecture (Istvan Cseri)
  • Development and Debugging Tools for Building XNA Games for Windows Phone (Cullen Waters)
  • Distributing and Monetizing Windows Phone Applications and Games (John Bruno, Todd Briggs)
  • Building Windows Phone Games (Michael Klucher)
  • Building a High Performance 3D Game for Windows Phone (Shawn Hargreaves, Tomas Vykruta)
  • Designing and Developing for the Rich Mobile Web (Joe Marini)
  • Silverlight Performance on Windows Phone (Seema Ramchandani)

Blogs to Know:

• Charlie Kindel – Windows Phone Developer Experience
• Windows Phone Developer Blog
• Christian Schormann – Expression Blend
• Peter Blois – Expression Blend
• Andre Vrignaud – Mobile Gaming
• Shawn Hargreaves – XNA
• Michael Klucher – XNA
• Twitter: @wp7dev

Windows Phone, training

Here are the resources I promised you from our recent MSDN Event series on Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4, and SharePoint 2010. Leave a comment and let us know what future topics you would like to see.

Visual Studio 2010

What’s New in Visual Studio 2010

Visual Studio on MSDN

Visual Studio 2010 Training Course on Channel 9

Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit

Visual Studio 2010 Tips & Tricks

Walkthrough: Debugging a Parallel Application

Web Deployment: Web.Config Transformation

Web Deployment in Visual Studio 2010

The Visual Studio Gallery

Visual Studio Extensibility

.NET 4.0

What’s new in .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 2

.NET Framework Client Profile

Entity Framework 4.0: Pluralization

Stephen Toub’s Session at PDC on Parallel Computing

Code Contracts (DevLabs)

What’s New in ASP.NET 4 and Visual Web Developer

ASP.NET MVC

Dynamic Data

.NET Developer Center

Data Developer Center

Concurrency (Parallelism)

WPF and Windows Forms

SharePoint 2010

Learn SharePoint 2010 on Channel 9

SharePoint 2010 Developer Center

.NET 4, Talks, Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2010, training