My First Windows Phone 7 Application

If you’re reading this, you probably know that I’ve been silent for a while on this blog. But I’ve been busy designing applications and networking. I will write about those applications next week.

Windows Phone 7 (WP7) was announced at MIX10 on Monday. The keynote is roughly an hour and a half and most of it is worth watching. I watched the entire keynote on Monday night on my 46 inch LCD TV through my laptop. Quite an enjoyable night.

Monday night I downloaded the free development tools and installed the tools Tuesday morning. By 6pm I had written my first Windows Phone 7 application. BTW, on a 46 inch TV, the phone emulator is 16” x 8”.

               

Here’s what’s special about Windows Phone 7: The applications you write are Silverlight applications. My barrier to writing Windows Mobile 5 and 6 applications was the need to learn the SDK. With my existing Silverlight, Blend, and Design experience, I’m able to start writing WP7 applications immediately.

If you’re interested in jumping in and learning how to write a WP7 application, check out this blog post with links to Developer Training Kits.

If you’re wondering about my application, I used the first Presidents of the USA as sample data. Apparently all of the presidents had cell phones in the Seattle area… I also designed the buttons in the lower part of the detail page (on the right).