In The Hand LtdIf you haven’t already heard there is a new release of the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools available which is compatible with the RTM release of Visual Studio. Before you install you need to uninstall the previous version and this is where you might have problems. See this tool for cleaning up your machine:- http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/pages/9544320.aspx […]
If you have read the UI Guidelines for Windows Phone 7 (If you haven’t, get it now) you notice that in the discussion of the ApplicationBar it states that a maximum of four icons can be added. I noticed inadvertently that if you add five icons in your XAML your app will compile and run […]
Microsoft announced a pair of new phone devices which will be manufactured by Sharp and branded KIN. These are not part of the Windows Phone 7 platform but are still (perhaps confusingly) called Windows Phone. KIN uses a lot of the same underlying technology as Windows Mobile has in the past and Windows Phone will […]
Microsoft have announced via Twitter that they have officially dropped the epic fail “Series” from the product name. Many have been referring to it as “Windows Phone 7” or “WP7” already and the “Series” was the latest in a series (sorry) of Microsoft adding redundant words to product names to unnecessarily confuse the public…
Because it is possible to use the XNA libraries within a Silverlight project you can add audio recording in your application using the Microphone class found in the Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio namespace. You can test this on the Emulator as it will work with a microphone attached to the host PC. First add a reference to Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll […]
The emulator for Windows Phone 7 includes Internet Explorer so you can test your websites now to see how they are rendered on this device. The emulator gives you a lifesize rendition of the device screen so you can format your pages appropriately. To customise your site for this new device you’ll need to identify […]
The Software Input Panel in Windows Phone 7 is entirely new. Unlike previous versions there will be a single SIP provider and device manufacturers will not be able to customise it. This means you can guarantee the same experience across different device types. With Windows Mobile there were some big differences between the input models […]
Windows Phone 7 supports two basic themes each with four highlight colours. This gives the system eight possible colour-schemes. If you look at the templates supplied with the current CTP development tools you’ll see that a selection of Colours and Brushes are hard-coded into your App.xaml. This means that even if you change the system […]
We have heard over the last couple of days how the Silverlight development model in Windows Phone 7 means that all developers are now mobile developers. However what does the platform offer beyond the standard Silverlight classes and functionality. Where possible I’ll try to compare this with the .NETCF Windows Mobile approach where applicable. Location […]
I’ve already had a couple of questions about how to develop applications for Windows Phone 7. At the moment the “developer story” has not been announced but over on the Windows Mobile Developer Blog they have announced that MIX10 will be where they discuss how to develop for Windows Phone 7:- http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/wmdev/archive/2010/02/15/windows-phone-7-series-going-big-for-developers-at-mix10.aspx Attendees will have […]
In The Hand Ltd 