Recently I had started exploring Windows Phone 7 with first Mango update and accumulated a no. of beginners tutorial in my blog. In this post, I am going to share all the chapters of the series as "31 days with WP7" - a must needed guide for a beginner who wants to learn about Windows Phone 7 programming.
Hope, this will be helpful to you to understand the basics before jump start to the application development. This post is on popular demand and I am dedicating this to all my blog readers. Thank you everyone for your support.
Find all the chapters of the beginner series of the Windows Phone 7 (Mango) Tutorial here and don't forget to share it to others. Feedback and suggestions are always appreciated.
Download Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta - Web and Offline Installer
Windows Phone 7.1 Developer Tools (code named "Mango") Beta has been released on 24th May 2011. It contains a no. of new features (more than 500) including Internet Explorer 9 and Skype inbuilt in the OS. You can use this new Beta Tools to develop applications targeted to both 7.0 and 7.1 OS version. Remember that, it is still in Beta stage (i.e. development stage) and hence you can't use it for production. In this post, find the links from where you can download (both Web & Standalone/Offline installer) and install the Developer Tools 7.1 Beta release.
Download Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Beta 2 (Mango) - Web and Offline Installer
Microsoft released Windows Phone 7.1 SDK Beta 2 today, 29th June 2011. It has a no. of new features as well as some breaking changes respect to previous Beta 1 release. In this post, find the link to download the Beta 2 SDK of Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango) which includes both the web and standalone offline installer. Also find the links towards new and breaking changes.
Download Windows Phone 7.1 SDK RTW (All Language Web/Offline Installer)
Microsoft released Windows Phone 7.1 SDK tools on 28th September 2011. It’s in RTW release, that means, it is released to web. Cliff Simpkins announced the release of the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 in Windows Team Blog. In this post, find the link to download the RTW version of Windows Phone 7.1 SDK (Mango) which includes both the web and standalone offline installer for all separate languages.
What’s New in Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta?
You might already know about those from various resources but wanted to share some of them in my blog. Read the complete post to know more about the new features.
How to Create a Hello World Application?
Jump started with my first exploration to create a "Hello World" application in Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango) public Beta. This is the first post of the series. As a beginner you will learn how to create a Windows Phone 7 project, what are the elements present there inside the MainPage.xaml and then a small "Hello World" application.
What is Windows Phone 7 Page, Navigation Context, Navigation Service and Navigation Cache Mode?
It's time to explore more in depth about the page. In this post, we will discuss about the base class called "Page" and it's various properties which includes NavigationContext, NavigationService and NavigationCacheMode. Read to know more about it.
What is Phone Application Page, Supported Page Orientation, Page Orientation and Application Bar?
Here in this post we will learn about "PhoneApplicationPage" which is root of any Windows Phone 7 page. Before jumping to the core in depth, a beginner must know all these things. Here we will discuss about it's properties. We will learn what is SupportedPageOrientation, PageOrientation and ApplicationBar.
What is Application Bar?
Application Bar is a tiny toolbar for your page to do some specific operation. Using this, you can easily add a toolbar for your application pages. It is a combination of 1-4 icon buttons and/or a collection of menu items. In my previous post, we already discussed about the class. Today we will discuss more on this topic. We will also create a small demo application to showcase the use of ApplicationBar. Read to know more and don't forget to share your feedback.
What are the Design Guidelines for Application Bar?
In the last chapter of the series, we learnt about Application bar and the uses of it using a small demo application. We described about Icon buttons and Menu items too. You can add an application bar to your page both from XAML and code behind. There are some design guidelines for Application bar and a developer must know about these before designing and developing their Windows Phone application. In this chapter, we will discuss about them.
How to Create Page Navigation?
In this Windows Phone 7 Tutorial, we will discuss on Navigation Service and Navigation Context. We will create a small demo application to showcase the functionality of those class. We will navigate from one page to another and then again use the history to return back to the previous page. In this chapter, we will use a case study of showing customer details in multiple page and using that demo we will learn about Navigation in Windows Phone 7 series. Read to learn more on it. Source code is available at the end of the post.
What is Application Lifecycle in Windows Phone 7?
The Windows Phone 7.1 application lifecycle has been designed in a way that it can run multiple applications in the background. Today we will discuss about the Lifecycle of Windows Phone 7 (Mango) apps. Here we will learn about various states of Windows Phone 7 application life cycle. This is an important chapter of the tutorial series to learn about the execution model before developing any application product. Read to know more about this topic.
What is Page State?
Sometime you may want to save the values present in your page while switching from one page to another page, sometime you may want to store the values while switching application between foreground and background. When you are switching from one application to the other, the first app enters into the deactivated mode. At that time you can store the current state of the page and display them back again by retrieving those values from page state once you return to the first app. In this chapter we will discuss about the page state. This will help you to know the basics about it, very good for a beginner to jump start with it.
How to Manage the State of a Windows Phone 7 Page?
In this chapter of the tutorial series, we will learn more about Page State Management in Windows Phone 7.1 with a small application. After reading this tutorial chapter, you will be able to store page state, retrieve and clear them on your need. Read to know more.
What is Application State?
Last two days, we discussed about Windows Phone 7 Page State. We learnt about saving and retrieving state of a page whenever require. Page State defines the current visual state of application page. Page state is accessible within that page. But think about a condition where you want to save values to the state and want to access them across the application. Then what to do? You have the option to use the Application State in that case. Application State stores data values which can be accessible by multiple pages. In this tutorial chapter, we will learn about Application State and in the next chapter, we will see an actual implementation of the same with a small demo.
How to Manage the Application State?
On last Saturday we learnt about basics of Application State in Windows Phone 7 Application. We discussed about the steps to pass value from one page to another using the Application State. In this chapter, we will learn more on the same with a small and simple demo. So, read to know about it and learn the way of sharing data between pages using state.
How to use Isolated Storage to Store and Retrieve Data?
Last couple of days we discussed about Page State and Application State of Windows Phone 7 (Mango). We learnt various ways of saving state of the page or application. After reading those chapters, you might have question in your mind that how to save the state of the application before closing the application and once you comeback again, you should get them back. If you are familiar in Silverlight, you should have answer to this. Yes, we can use Isolated Storage to save the state of the app and read values whenever require in future. In this tutorial, we will discuss about this with a simple demo code. If you are new to Isolated Storage, you will be able to learn how to use it directly in Windows Phone. Read to know more.
What is Tombstoning?
Mobile phones have very limited resource as compared to a desktop PC and hence it is very difficult to run multiple applications simultaneously. Also, suppose if multiple resources run simultaneously, it will eat up the battery life and make your phone stop working after certain period of time. So what to do? To overcome this situation, tombstoning comes into picture. It saves the current data and then moves the app to the background or closes the app after saving all the data. This calls as Tombstoning. In this post, we will discuss on the same.
How to Show and Hide the onscreen keyboard in Emulator?
If you are developing any Windows Phone 7 application form and using the Emulator to run the app, you may find this tip very useful. A first time user who feels very annoying to click the mouse button to enter text using the phone emulator can hide the onscreen keyboard and use the computer's keyboard after reading this tip.
How to Detect the Network Information of the Device?
User can now detect the mobile operator and other network information's in Windows Phone 7.1 Mango devices programmatically. The new APIs to detect these information will help you to identify the mobile operator, availability of network, Wi-Fi access etc. Let's jump into deep drive to know more about these APIs and the integration to your application using a small demo. Read to learn about it.
How to Detect the Device Information?
In this new chapter of the tutorial series, we will learn how to detect the device information using the APIs present inside the SDK. We will learn how to detect whether any Keyboard has been installed with the device, whether the device is running under battery or using any external power supply. We will also learn the way to detect about the memory of the device and other device information.
How to Create a WP7 Alarm Application?
Windows Phone 7.1 now supports scheduled tasks which runs even the application is not running. We can now schedule a task and when the bell hits, it starts executing the said task. In this chapter of the tutorial series, we will explore this using the Alarm class. Alarm class creates an instance which runs in the background using the task agent and at the specified time, it will raise the event to execute. If your application is not running at that time too, it will execute and show the alarm screen. Read to know more about the class with a small demonstration.
How to Create a WP7 Reminder Application?
Yesterday we discussed about the Alarm class and also demonstrated the use of it using a small demo app. Today in this post we will learn about Reminder class and will see the structure of the same. We will also demonstrate the implementation with a small demo. Like Alarm class, Reminder class is also part of the "Microsoft.Phone.Scheduler" namespace and inherits the same base class. Let's read more about it and explore each and every step to create a simple Windows Phone 7 Reminder application.
What are the various Phone Tasks available?
Last two days, we learnt about Alarm and Reminder class present for Windows Phone 7 application development. We came to know about the class structure and demoed the implementation with small application created in step-by-step process. We also learnt about the use of Task while discussing the same. In this tutorial chapter we will learn more about the tasks present for Mango devices. After reading this part you will be able to understand the different tasks and their uses. Read more to learn about them with visual code snippet and huge screenshots.
What is WP7 Accelerometer?
Accelerometer defines the force applied to the Windows Phone 7 device which can be used to determine the measure of direction that has been applied by the user by moving the device. This values are represented as a 3D vector coordinates in X, Y and Z axis. Using the Accelerometer class present in the library, we can programmatically control the device's 3D acceleration. In this article we will learn about the class that we will use to demonstrate the same feature. Read to learn more about it.
What is Accelerometer Tool?
Now, it's the time to see how to run the same inside the Phone emulator. In this post we are going to see the accelerometer tool that comes with the Phone 7 emulator. Read more to know how to run the accelerometer tool and what customization we can do with this tool. This will be beneficial for you when we discuss more about the topic with a sample application.
How to Create a Small Accelerometer Application?
Here in this post, we will learn the use of this feature with a small demo application. We will also learn how to use the phone to write application that depends on the gravitational force applied to the sensors. This will give you better idea to create game application that will work when the user moves his phone device.
What is Local Database Support in new Public Beta and How to Create a DataContext?
Do you know that, Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango) now supports local database? Yes, you can now use local database inside your Phone 7 device and use it to CRUD operations. You can now create a DataContext class from an existing database and use it as the entry point class to do DB operation. In this chapter we will learn how to create a DataContext class for local SQL CE database. At the end of this tutorial our data context class will be ready for further DB operations.
How to Configure the Project for Accessing the Local Database?
In this post (I will rather calling it as a Tip), we will configure the project by adding the generated DataContext class and in the next post, we will learn what are the various CRUD operations we can do with a sample application. That will give you complete visibility to this new feature implementation.
How to do CRUD operation in Local Database of Windows Phone 7 Application?
In this article, we are going to discuss about the CRUD operations that we can do using the DataContext class with a small application. We will learn how to create and delete a database, we will also learn how to insert or fetch records. After reading this tutorial you will also be able to do other operations like edit, search etc.
What is Database Connection String and it's Parameters?
In this post, we will discuss more on the connection string. After reading this post, you will be able to know what are the various types and parameters available for connection string.
What is Input Scope?
Input Scope of a TextBox defines the information related to the scope of the data provided by the input method and use to define the layout of the onscreen keyboard of the device. It is present in the "System.Windows.Input" namespace and exposed in TextBox as a property called "InputScope". You might be wondering what is this property and why should one use it. Ok, let us discuss this in depth with a small sample. After reading this chapter, you will be able to understand it more and use it on your business requirement.
How to Detect whether the Network is Available?
Sometime we need to know whether Network connectivity is available or not from our application. In Windows Phone 7, we have the required API exposed for the developers to detect the status of the network connection and take respective step based on that. So how to detect it? In this small tip of the tutorial series, we will learn about the API and we will also see how this can be done using a small demo which includes code too. Read to know more about it.
How to Detect the Current Theme?
Many time we need to find out which Theme we are using in Windows Phone 7. Based upon the chosen theme we may want to set our own Theme for the application. So, how to find out that? In this post, I am going to share you the Tip. Using it you will be able to identify the current theme of your Windows Phone 7 device. Read to know more.CodeProject
