14 DAY TRIAL // With the first Windows Phone 7 devices expected to hit the shelves in the beginning of the fourth quarter of the ongoing year, Redmond-based software giant Microsoft is gearing up the development of applications for the operating system through the release of a new version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools. The first flavor of the solution went live a few months ago, and now app builders can download a beta version of the development environment, aimed at facilitating availability of Windows Phone 7 mobile software solutions.
The new Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta solution was made available for download on Monday, July 12, and includes: Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone Beta, Windows Phone Emulator Beta, Silverlight for Windows Phone Beta, Microsoft Expression Blend for Windows Phone Beta, XNA Game Studio 4.0 Beta. In other words, all the necessary tools for the development of appealing applications for the upcoming operating system are there.
According to a recent article on the Windows Phone Developer blog, some of the main changes in the new release include: - Microsoft Expression Blend for Windows Phone – Blend is now integrated completely into the Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta. - Developer Registration Utility – Now you can unlock your Windows Phone 7 device for development purposes. - XAP Deployment Tool – if you want to deploy XAP files directly to an unlocked device, now you can. - The Windows Phone 7 API – we’re getting close to completion. Many namespaces that were previously distributed over several different DLLs have now been consolidated into one. In addition, there have been realignments and changes in several other namespaces as well. Push Notifications, Accelerometer and App Bar APIs have all been updated. - Additional Controls – There are some additional controls coming in the next few weeks (i.e. Panorama and Pivot) which didn’t make the beta release. They are coming soon. Among the novelties included in the new release, we can count: framework consolidation, updated Silverlight control templates, changed elements in the Application Manifest File, removed Phone Controls, changes to phone-specific members of Page and Frame classes, the WindowsPhoneEvents class was removed and replaced with PhoneApplicationService class, 'Pause' and 'Resume' renamed to 'Activated' and 'Deactivated', changes in Manipulation EventArgs in Silverlight, changed push notification APIs, and other changes more. More info can be found here.