Windows Phone 7 Developer Guide

Great achievements don抰 happen overnight梩hey evolve over time based on a series of successes that converge and drive you onward. My favorite soccer team, Seattle Sounders FC, started life way back in 1974 in the North American Soccer League and only achieved their recent success in Major League Soccer through working hard to raise their game and improve their results. Here at Microsoft, we抳e always focused on raising our game. In my 20 years with the company, I抳e worked on projects ranging from the Microsoft?Windows?2.0 SDK and COM, to Windows Media? Center and Windows Home Server. Each new generation of products raises the game for both users and developers. And now I抦 proud to be part of the team that抯 driving our latest achievement, Windows Phone 7. Windows Phone 7 is a different kind of phone, designed for life in motion. It抯 a change from the past that incorporates smart design and is aimed at users who need to manage their personal and business lives as an integrated experience. Or, to be more accurate, a series of integrated experiences that include People, Office, Pictures, Music and Videos, Windows Market Place, and Games. When designing Windows Phone 7, we stepped back and thought hard about who our customers are and what they need from a phone. Everyone on the Windows Phone 7 team woke up every morning thinking 揥hat can I do today to make the end-user experience great??This was true of even the people focused on building the developer experience. The end user always came first; our mantra was 揈nable end users to personalize their phone experience with great applications and games and ensure that developers can be profitable.? It has been extremely gratifying to see the incredible innovation being brought forward by third-party developers building Windows Phone 7 applications and games. Based on our experience building the Xbox 360? Windows Media?Center, and Zune? we built a phone that users can personalize and make their own, that helps developers be profitable, and that enables cloud-powered experiences that align with the Microsoft vision for “three screens and the cloud” computing. This book, with its practical scenario-based approach, will help you to be part of that vision. It will guide you through the process of understanding Windows Phone 7, getting started developing applications for the phone, and creating beautiful and engaging user experiences that achieve success in this new and exciting marketplace. The book explores the four main areas of focus: the phone runtime (code that you write to run on the client), services (code that runs on the cloud), tools to help you design and develop your applications, and tools that help you ship and sell your applications. It does all this within the context of a fictional company that is extending its cloud-powered application to the phone. As a developer, you need to be part of this new world where life happens on the move. We’ve made it easy to leverage your existing skills and apply them to the phone. This book will help you raise your game and score in this exciting new market. Sincerely, Charlie Kindel General Manager, Windows Phone 7