Windows Phone and Windows 8 development. Getting started with creating applications for the windows ecosystem using .NET and Visual studio

1. Windows (Phone) Development
for n00bs
Christos Matskas
@christosmatskas
https://cmatskas.com

2. Intro - What to expect
• Where do we start
• Planning for your app
• Development/testing
• Questions

3. Where do I start?
• .NET developers will find it easy
• XAML? What is XAML?
• HTML5 Web Apps (WP7 and later)
• HTML, CSS, Javascript (WP8.1 only)

4. Windows (Phone) Dev Centre
 Get a developer account
 Windows Phone App Studio
 Get the tools for WP Easy --> hard (Asc)
- VS2013 with Update 2 comes with all the tools
- VS2013 Express Update 2RC
- VS2012 with Update 4 + SDK
- Windows 7 (no emulation)
- Windows 8 full experience

5. Tools for Windows Store apps (cont)
 VS2012 or later
 Windows 8
 Touch Screen
 Use SourceControl (Git, subversion, TFS etc)

6. Demo
WP - Hello World

7. Before you start development
 Create Proof-of-Concept
 Check feature availability on other platforms
 WP and Win8/WinRT don't share the same
namespaces.
 Read the UX and development guidelines
 Get a designer to do the UI

8. Before you start development (cont)
 Physical device or emulator?
 Create a wireframe for your app
 Watch videos and tutorials on mobile
development

9. WP App Considerations
 Target version (WP7, WP8, WP8.1)
 Storage requirements. What's available to you:
- Installation folder (7 or greater)
- Local folder (7 or greater)
- Media library (8 or greater)
- External storage (SD card) (8 or greater)
- Azure Mobile Services (7 or greater)
- 3rd Party API OneDrive, DropBox etc. (7 or greater)

10. WP App Considerations (cont)
 Live Tiles, Push Notifications, and Background Agents
 Sensors?
 Avoid functionality duplication. Do not re-invent the
wheel!
 Database (xml, Json, SQLite)
 Globalization. Very important!!!
 PCL (Portable Class Libraries)

11. Monetizing on your app
 Application types:
- In-App-Purchases
- Try-before-you-buy
- Free.
 Advertising

12. Additional tools
All of these are FREE
 The Windows Phone Toolkit
 Coding4Fun Toolkit
 Windows Phone Power Tools
 ISE (Isolated Storage Explorer)
 Silverlight Toolkit from Microsoft is up on
CodePlex (7 & 8)

13. Analytics/Crash reports
 Crash reports through Dev Centre Dashboard
 Roll out your own
 Use 3rd party analytics (Localitics etc)

14. Testing – Yeah baby!
 Unit Tests
 Integration Tests
 Emulator and physical device tests
 Performance tools (App profiling in VS)
 Alpha/Beta testing with real users

15. Visual Studio App profiling
 External events
 Frame rate
 CPU usage %
 Application responsiveness
 Network data transfer
 MBps
 Battery consumption mAh
 Memory usage MB
 Storyboards
 Image loads
 GC events

16. Submitting your app
 “About” page
 Tile/Marketplace Icons
 Screenshots
 App submission and verification: 5-7 days

17. Next Step?
Step 1: Open VS and create a new WP project
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Lots of $$$$ or ££££

18. Demo
WinRT - Hello World

19. Getting Help
 Google/Bing is your friend
 Twitter & Jabbr can also be used though to a
less extend
 Nokia Developer site
 Dev centre has a very large number of code
samples which you can use (or "steal"). They
are available to anyone for FREE

20. Links
 Windows Phone Dev Centre: http://bit.ly/1jae3yN
 Windows Store Dev Centre: http://bit.ly/1jj7wfe
 Windows Azure: http://bit.ly/1skBNjc
 Nokia Developer Centre: http://nokia.ly/1g1g93p
 Developer downloads for WP: http://bit.ly/1iJd473

21. Links (cont)
 Silverlight toolkit for Windows Phone: http://bit.ly/1skC2eg
 Error reporting using Little Watson: http://bit.ly/1hHfn6E
 YourLastAboutDialog: http://bit.ly/1uTZgfm
 ScreenShot.cs: http://bit.ly/1oIhMCT