14 DAY TRIAL // Developers can access a new resource from Microsoft designed to simplify the creation of mobile applications running on Windows Phone 7 that can stretch into the software giant’s Cloud platform. Live on CodePlex, the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 is offered under a Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL), which is an open source license.
The toolkit streamlines building Windows Phone 7 apps which take advantage of Windows Azure services, but this explication is somewhat redundant given the actual label of the resource.
But at the same time, the Toolkit is not focused exclusively on Windows Azure services. Wade Wegner, Windows Azure Platform Technical Evangelist explained that Windows Phone 7 app devs can also provide users with Cloud storage options via applications built with the Toolkit.
“Rather than require you to learn any new semantics around storage or put in the time to build out membership services to provide authentication and authorization for your phone applications, we’ve done it for you and provide you with a sample demonstrating the necessary steps,” Wegner stated.
I should note that Wegner has an excellent walkthrough on his blog on just how to get started using the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7.
At the same time, the official Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 site on CodePlex offers not only downloads but also extensive documentation to help developers make the best out of this particular resource.
Wegner enumerated the main components of the toolkit:
“•Binaries – These are libraries we’ve written that you can use in your Windows Phone 7 applications to make it easier to work with Windows Azure (e.g. a full storage client library for blobs and tables).
•Docs – We’ve provided documentation that covers setup and configuration, a review of the toolkit content, getting started, and some troubleshooting tips.
•Dependency Checker – As you’ve come to expect and love, we provide a full dependency checker to ensure that you have all the bits required in order to successfully use the toolkit.
•Project Templates – We have built VSIX (which is the unit of deployment for a Visual Studio 2010 Extension) files that create project templates that make it easy for you to build brand new applications.
•Samples – We have a sample application that fully leverages the toolkit, both available in C# and VB.NET. The sample application is also built into one of the two project templates created by the toolkit.”
Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 is available for download here.