1. Windows Phone App
Development Overview
Alan Mendelevich
AdDuplex Founder
ailon@ailon.org
http://devblog.ailon.org
Twitter: @ailon

2. Agenda
• Hardware
• Metro
• Development Overview
• Publication

3. Hardware

4. Hardware Specification 2010
Display Multimedia
480x800 QVGA Codec acceleration
320x480 HVGA (future)
Capacitive Memory
touch 256MB RAM or more
4 or more contact 8GB Flash or more
points
Sensors
A-
GPS, Accelerometer, C GPU
ompass, Light DirectX 9
acceleration
Camera
5 mega pixels or
more CPU
ARMv7
Hardware buttons Cortex/Scorpion or
Start, Search, Back better

5. Hardware Specification 2011

6. Form Factors

7. OEMs

8. Metro

9. Metro

10. Inspiration

11. Metro Principles
• Clean, light, open, fast
• Celebrate typography
• Alive & in motion
• Content not chrome
• Authentically digital

12. Accent Colors
12

13. Gestures

14. Touch Target Sizes
• Minimum recommended
touch target size – 9mm
(~90 px)
• Minimum spacing between
touchable elements – 2mm
• Visible element size – 60-
100% of touch surface

15. Application Bar
• Up to 4 buttons
• Only the main
actions
• Use slide out menu
for less important
items

16. Pivot
• Grouping and filtering of information
• Switching by tapping or swipe gesture

17. Panorama
• “Rich” content
• Leads user to the
next screen
• Starting point for
multiple
destinations
17

18. Metro & Your Own Style

19. Development
Overview

20. Flavors of Applications
 Modern XAML/event-driven  High performance game
application UI framework framework
 Rapid creation of visually  Rapid creation of multi-screen
stunning apps 2D and 3D games
 Metro-themed UI  Rich content pipeline
controls  Mature, robust, widely adopted
 500,000 developers technology
spanning Windows spanning
and web Xbox 360,
Windows,
and Zune

21. Free Powerful Tools
• Expression Blend • Visual Studio

22. Free Powerful Tools
• http://create.msdn.com
– Visual Studio 2010 Express
– Windows Phone Emulator
– Silverlight
– XNA Game Studio 4.0
– Microsoft Expression Blend for Windows
Phone
– .NET Framework 4

23. Silverlight for
Windows Phone
Overview

24. Silverlight 4+
• Based on Silverlight 4
• Plus specific modules (phone functions,
sensors, etc.)
• XAML + C# (or VB.NET)
• Optimized for performance on smaller,
less powerful devices

25. XAML
• eXtensible Application Markup Language
• XML based
• Used in WPF and Silverlight
• Declaratively describes
UI, animations, etc.

26. Theming
• Users can switch system
colors
– Select black or white
background
– Select “accent” color
• Standard Silverlight
controls automatically
adapt to selected theme
• Preset styles

27. Navigation
• Navigation is page based
– Similar to web navigation
– Pages are identified by
URIs
private void hyperlinkButton1_Click(
object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
NavigationService.Navigate(
new Uri("/SecondPage.xaml",
UriKind.RelativeOrAbsolute)
);
}
27

28. Back Button
• Returns to the previous page
– UI shouldn’t duplicate this functionality
• The behavior could be overridden when
going to the previous page isn’t logical
– Closing a pop-up dialog, etc.
– Can’t be used for actions absolutely unrelated
to “returning”, like shooting, etc.

29. Application Bar
• Use AppBar instead of a
custom menu system
• Up to 4 buttons + menu
• Buttons for most
important tasks only
• White color on the
transparent background
(without circle)

30. Orientation support
• Pages can be vertical, horizontal or change
orientation automatically
• Set via SupportedOrientations property
• PortraitOrLandscape value – automatic
orientation switching

31. Data Binding
• Automatically binds object properties
• Separation of concerns
(design/development)
– MVVM pattern

32. Pivot and Panorama
• The best starting
point for apps
• Complies with
Metro out of the
box
• Present information
in easily digestible
portions

33. Pivot vs. Panorama
Pivot Panorama
• Can be used to display • More impressive
more information • Background images
• Supports programmatic automatically stretched
switching • Horizontal PanoramaItem
• LoadingPivotItem and for vizualization of content
UnloadingPivotItem of different width
events for delayed
content loading
• Effective use of screen
real estate

34. Launchers and Choosers
• Each app runs in its own sandbox and
can’t accept system resources or other
apps
• Launchers and Choosers mitigate this by
allowing indirect access to these features

35. Application Lifecycle
Fast App Resume
Resuming .. .
Restore state!
State preserved! running
IsAppInstancePreserved
IsAppInstancePreserved == Save State!
== false
true
activated deactivated
Tombstone
the oldest
app
Tombstoned dormant Phone resources detached
Threads & timers suspended

36. Publishing

37. Publishing Options

38. Publishing Process
Application and Game Submission
.xap App .xap
App
Packaging &
Submission .dll .dll
Validation
Marketplace
Windows Phone 7 Deployment Service
Add Apply .xap .xap
Metadata Test Sign
.dll
Criteria .dll

39. Summary
• Modern mobile platform
• Metro design language
• Silverlight or XNA or Silverlight+XNA
• Centralized app Marketplace

40. Additional resources
• App Hub
– http://create.msdn.com
• Programming Windows Phone by Charles
Petzold
– http://www.charlespetzold.com/phone/
• Twitter - #wpdev

41. Questions?
Alan Mendelevich
Twitter: @ailon
ailon@ailon.org