14 DAY TRIAL // Free Windows Phone 7 resources from Microsoft abound, with the Redmond company doing its best to fuel the development of applications for the latest version of its Windows mobile platform.
At just a few thousand apps, the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace is dwarfed by the application hubs built for rival operating systems such as Android and iOS.
Devs can already access and download the Windows Phone Developer Tools, including Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, XNA Game Studio 4.0 free of charge.
At the same time, the software giant started offering the Programming Windows Phone 7 ebook, also free.
But Microsoft is doing so much more. In this regard, a new initiative from the company is designed specifically to attract new developers to Windows Phone 7.
Aspiring and hobbyist devs should head over to the” Windows Phone 7 Development for Absolute Beginners” site on Channel9.
As the official label of the new WP7 dev hotspot implies, the resources offered are tailored to get developers started building new apps for Windows Phone 7 even if they don’t have any previous experience.
“A new video series on Channel 9 will help aspiring Windows Phone 7 developers get started. We'll start off with the basics and work our way up so in a few hours, you will know enough to build simple WP7 applications, such as a GPS aware note taking application. We'll walk you through getting the tools, knowing what an if statement is, to using the GPS built into the phone and much more!” revealed Bruce D. Kyle, ISV Architect Evangelist, Microsoft.
There is a range of content on the site, more than enough to keep you busy for a while, but hopefully sufficient to get you developing new apps for Windows Phone 7.
“There are 64 lessons. So even experienced developers can get up to speed on a particular topic quickly. Each part is between 3 to 20 minutes long,” Kyle added.