Beginners Guide to Windows Phone Development (#WPDev) Tutorials

On popular demand, I came up with this blog post. In this page, I composed all the articles, tips & tricks, problem & solutions that a Windows Phone Developer should know.

This list is not a complete list and I will add more links to this page once I complete more articles and tips on WPDev. So, bookmark it for your future reference and to get all the latest updates on Windows Phone 7 Application Development.

Before starting with the Windows Phone, you need to become familiar with the device. This is anytime needed for a beginner to know more about the device and the latest happenings in this platform. I will update this section with the latest findings, so that, you will be able to know more on this. Here are few tips for you to get comfortable with the device.

1. How to Pin an Application to the Start Screen?

2. How to Unpin an Application from the Start Screen?

3. How to Unlock Your WP7 Device for Development?

4. How to Enable Call Waiting Service in WP7?

5. What’s New in Windows Phone 8?

6. Can we Upgrade our WP7 Device to Support WP8?

Now it’s time for you to get started with the application development process. Before starting with the tutorials, you need to setup your development environment with the SDK tools. Here comes the links for you to download the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK tools. Few links are deprecated because a new version of the installer is now available. Also, you can find a free eBook to get started with Windows Phone Toolkit.

1. Download Windows Phone 7.1 SDK

   • What’s New in Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta? (Deprecated)

   • Download Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta (Deprecated)

   • Download Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Beta 2 (Mango) - Web and Offline Installer (Deprecated)

   • Installation Steps of Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Beta 2 (Deprecated)

   • Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Release Candidate (RC) released - Download the Offline/Web Installer (Deprecated)

   • Download Windows Phone 7.1 SDK RTW (All Language Web/Offline Installer)

2. Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit - August 2011 (7.1 SDK) Released

3. Download Free eBook: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit In Depth

Once you are done with the installation of the Windows Phone 7 SDK, you can jump start with the development tutorials and build your first Windows Phone application using Visual Studio.

Here comes the list of Windows Phone 7 Tutorial. The list is not complete but I will add them here frequently once I publish new articles on Windows Phone Development. Start reading them one by one and if you have any queries, don’t hesitate to ask me on the same page and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

1. Creating a Hello World Application

2. Know more about Windows Phone Page

3. Know more about PhoneApplicationPage

4. What is Application Bar?

5. Design Guidelines for Application Bar

6. Working with Navigation

7. Know about Application Lifecycle

8. What is Page State?

9. Know more about Page State Management

10. What is Application State?

11. Know more about Application State Management

12. Using Isolated Storage to Store and Retrieve Data

13. What is Tombstoning?

14. Detecting Network Information of the Device

15. Detecting Device Information

16. How to Create a WP7 Alarm Application?

17. How to Create a WP7 Reminder Application?

18. Know about various Phone Tasks

19. What is WP7 Accelerometer?

20. Know about the Accelerometer Tool

21. Small Demo of Accelerometer Application

22. Local Database Support, Create DataContext

23. Local Database Support, Configuring Project

24. Local Database Support, CRUD operation with Demo

25. Learn about Database Connection String

26. What is Input Scope?

27. WP7 Launchers and Choosers - A WP7Dev should know

    1. How to Call a Number in WP7 using the PhoneCallTask?

    2. How to Compose SMS in WP7 using the SmsComposeTask?

    3. How to Launch the WP7 Application Details Page using the MarketplaceDetailTask?

    4. How to Launch the WP7 Marketplace Hub using the MarketplaceHubTask?

    5. How to Launch the WP7 Media Library using the PhotoChooserTask?

    6. How to Retrieve Contact Information in WP7 using the AddressChooserTask?

    7. How to Retrieve Email Address in WP7 using the EmailAddressChooserTask?

    8. How to Retrieve Phone Number from Contacts in WP7 using the PhoneNumberChooserTask?

    9. How to Save Contact in WP7 using the SaveContactTask?

    10. How to Save Email Address in WP7 using the SaveEmailAddressTask?

    11. How to Save Phone Number in WP7 using the SavePhoneNumberTask?

    12. How to Save Ringtones in WP7 using the SaveRingtoneTask?

    13. How to Search for a Contact in WP7 using the Contacts class?

    14. How to Send Email in WP7 using the EmailComposeTask?

    15. How to Share Links from WP7 to Social Networking Sites using the ShareLinkTask?

    16. How to Share Status from WP7 using the ShareStatusTask?

    17. How to search in the WP7 Marketplace using the MarketplaceSearchTask?

28. Know About WP7 Page Orientation and Supported Orientations

29. Know About WP7 System Tray - Tips to Show or Hide it

30. How to Detect whether the Network is Available?

31. How to Detect the Current Theme?

32. How to detect System Information of WP7 Device?
33. How can you Add Network Connection Settings Page in your WP7 Application?
34. What is Frame Rate Counter in WP7?
35. Why the Frame Rate Counter is not Available in my WP7 Emulator?
36. How to Deploy XAP File in a Windows Phone Emulator?

37. Showing and Hiding onscreen keyboard in Emulator

38. Working with Default FontSize in Windows Phone 7 Applications

39. How to detect whether Music is playing in WP Background

40. How to use PlaySoundAction Behavior in WP7 Application?

41. Fetching Picasa Images through RSS in WP7

42. How to download and save images in WP7 Media Library?

I hope that the above list of tutorial will help you to get started with the Windows Phone 7 application development. I will continue updating the list regularly. Do bookmark this page for future reference.

Except the above WP7Dev Tutorials, I also have few tutorial chapters on 3rd party control library from Telerik. Here is a list of few links. Will continue adding more into this list.

1. What’s New in Telerik RadControls for WP7 Q2.2012 Release?

2. Working with WP7 RadBusyIndicator control from Telerik

3. Learn about RadDiagnostics for retrieving Exception Details using the Telerik Controls for WP7

4. Learn about RadPhoneApplicationFrame for Page Animations using the Telerik Controls for WP7

A collection of problems and solutions are kept here. If you find these problems while building your Windows Phone apps, it will directly help you to resolve faster.

1. Solution for “FrameworkDispatcher.Update has not been called exception” in WP XNA

2. Solution for “The program can't start because MFPlat.dll is missing from your computer”

Did you come across any other problems? Do let me know and if you have any solutions for that, send it to here: contribute@kunal-chowdhury.com and I will post it here in my blog as Guest Post giving proper credit to you.

End Note

This is not a complete list. I just shared the articles that I have composed here in my blog. In future I will add more links here in this post once I compose more on the said topic. Do bookmark this page for your reference and share it to your network and help others to find this tutorial easily.

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