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Today is the start of Microsoft’s MIX10 conference in Las Vegas, and there’s some good stuff coming down the Windows Phone 7 pipeline. First up, Microsoft has announced that they have made their Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools available for download through their MSDN download center. The tools will give eager devs a chance to get their feet wet with app development for the brand-spankin’ new mobile operating system from Microsoft.
Microsoft gave a couple quick demos at MIX10, showing off the click-and-drag simplicity of creating WP7 apps. And, to highlight the ease of developing for the WP7 platform, Microsoft showcased apps like the eBay app that took something like eight weeks to go from sketch to fully working code by using Silverlight to develop an out-of-browser app for WP7. The app proved that, with the right tools, devs can push out WP7 apps with very little time investment to Windows Phones around the world.
Microsoft also confirmed, again, that every Windows Phone powered by WP7 will be a Zune handset. That means all the musical prowess of the Zune music player will be integrated into the platform, giving users a familiar interface in the Zune music hub.
With the dev tools download, you’ll get Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone; Windows Phone 7 Series Add-in for Visual Studio, for developers already working with Visual Studio 2010; Windows Phone 7 Series emulator; and the XNA Game Studio 4.0 for those of you looking to make some high-powered games for WP7.
Grab Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools here.
About The Author
Will Park
Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...
