Thushan Fernando Uncut

Here’s something you wouldn’t see every day. Bill Gates introducing the world to DirectX in 1995.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JokM_fExpI

Don’t interrupt him! My how things have changed.

I’ve been busy hacking away the past month or so with Windows Phone 7 and Android. They’re both very different when it comes to the out of box developer experience – with Microsoft tools being supremo right now. Thought I’d contribute some resources when it comes to (on this post) writing Windows Phone 7 Applications. I’ll try and keep this up to date with new things I find.

Feel free to comment with other great resources.

Last Updated: 16th November, 2010

Books/eBooks

• Nick Randolph’s excellent book on Windows Phone Development – Professional Windows Phone 7 Application Development.
• Charles Petzold‘s gift from the WP7 team – Programming Windows Phone 7 (free ebook!)

Online Resources

Developer

• Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools RTW – You’d have already installed this anyway!
• Second release of Sliverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit – Several new controls and tweaks/fixes!
• 31 Days of Windows Phone 7 – Excellent guide to up skill on Windows Phone 7 gradually covering a lot of the core things you’ll be using by Jeff Blankenburg.
• Windows Phone 7 Jumpstart – Videos from Channel 9 to get you going!
• Windows Phone 7 MSDN How-To Index – Excellent list of articles published on MSDN about Windows Phone 7.
• Patterns & Practices for Windows Phone 7 – Release Candidate is out as of writing, useful information for all developers.
• Windows Phone 7 Developer Tips & Tricks – Tim Heuer’s _very_ useful list of tips and tricks you should keep in mind.
• Windows Phone 7 Developer Tips from Kevin Marshall – Extensive list of suggestions and tips for working on WP7 applications!
• 30 Windows Phone Development Tutorials – Aggregate of tutorials covering writing full twitter clients to moving from iPhone to WP7.
• Building High Performance Silverlight Applications on Windows Phone 7 – Great blog post with video links and a white paper from the Silverlight Team.
• Windows Phone 7 Tutorials from Kirupa – Excellent easy to follow tutorials on WP7 development!
• Windows Phone Geek – All things aggregating on WP7!

Developer Frameworks/Tools

• ComponentOne XAP Optimiser – XAP optimiser & obfuscation for Silverlight but usable for Windows Phone too!
• MVVM Light Toolkit – Implementation of MVVM for WP7.
• Caliburn Micro – Lightweight version of Caliburn to help implement a variety of UI Patterns.
• Ninja Database Light / Pro – Persist objects (with AES optionally) to Isolated Storage. Used to be free but now commercial.
• Windows Phone Profiler – First profiler for WP7, watch the Channel 9 video!
• NEW (16/11/2010): Runtime Intelligence for Windows Phone – “A commercial-grade SKU of Dotfuscator specifically targeting Windows Phone 7 including patented renaming, control flow, string encryption, and metadata removal obfuscation transforms.” (source: Windows Team Blog)

Developer Components/Controls

• HighPerformance ProgressBar for Windows Phone – Use the PerformanceProgressBar instead of the stock when you’re wanting an indeterminate progress indicator!
• Telerik RadControls for Windows Phone – A set of components to add to the standard controls available.
• Resco MobileLight Toolkit – Another UI toolkit for Windows Phone 7, a  bit pricey but might be worth it – haven’t evaluated!

Designer/UX

• Design Resources for Windows Phone – Icons and Design Templates you can download.
• UI Design and Interaction Guide for Windows Phone 7 – (PDF) July 2010 (2.0) edition that covers quite exhaustively, the user-interface and Metro theme in WP7.
• Application Bar Icon Pack – 64 Application Bar Icons you can reuse for your application (they’re also in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Icons). See the complimentary How to: Add an Application Bar to Your Application on MSDN (via Windows Phone Developer Blog)
• ClarityConsulting’s blog on Windows Phone 7
• David Crow’s Windows Phone 7 Resources index.

Hardware

• Windows Phone Devices – Microsoft’s US-centric list of all Windows Phone 7 devices available.