Will you be developing for Windows Phone 7 Series

[DeanMc]

I am!

http://sproutsms.codeplex.com/

Don't have €99 euro to hand to pay for the app hub membership yet though

[techgnome]

If I could afford to get my hand on a WinPhone7, I might... I did snag the SDK with the Emulator. Ran through the standard Hello World type tutorial. After that, I couldn't really come up with anything practical to do with it. I will say this, the emulator worked a treat on my laptop's touch screen. was (almost) just like using the phone itself.

-tg

[DeanMc]

Although I have the HD7 all my work is done via the emulator, It is a great piece of kit. On an unrelated note does anyone know where to hire an artist for an open source projects. I've been to Deviant Art where I have had success with paid work in the past but it seems Open Source is beneat a lot of artists.

[Nightwalker83]

Sadly, I think I might be learning how to develop for the iphone as part of my software development course next year.

[DeanMc]

I wouldn't be sad about that at all!

[Nightwalker83]

I wouldn't be sad about that at all!

Yeah, I'm interested to learn how to development for mobile phones no matter what the platform is.

[DeanMc]

And that is a good idea. As a person who works in the telecoms industry I can tell you the year on year uptake of smartphones is a safe bet to hedge.

[DeanMc]

App is now beta... runs

[Jenner]

Maybe if I happen to pick one up. Nice to see their new mobile OS being more "phone-like". Windows Mobile just never seemed right.

[DeanMc]

Yeah it is much better. I worried for so long it would be old winmo under the covers. Thankfully it is not. Just a note, my app is pretty much useless to anyone outside of Ireland as it only does Irish Operator webtexts for the moment.

[Nightwalker83]

@Dean,

Which language is used to code applications for Windows Phone 7? I will have to learn Objective C as part of iphone coding. I will have to re-learn how to use a Mac.

[techgnome]

It's C# on the Windows Phone 7.

-tg

[stlaural]

I'm planning to develop on the Phone 7, but I don't have much time lately I've got a new Job since 3 months and until my new condo is completed I need to travel by train and metro 2h to go to work AND to come back home. But everything should be back to normal in 5 months I did have a look at the Dev Kit and it does look great!

[gep13]

It's C# on the Windows Phone 7.

-tg

VB.Net Support is in the pipeline though. I think I am right in saying that the tooling support has moved to CTP.

Gary

[Nightwalker83]

It's C# on the Windows Phone 7.

-tg

Yay! I only wish we were using Windows Phone 7.

[gep13]

Yay! I only wish we were using Windows Phone 7.

I would be making a request to your lecturer

[techgnome]

This news should make a few people in this thread happy: http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=634193

I'm installing it right now. Going to take it for a spin.

-tg

[Jenner]

YAY! Now if only they'd update the XBOX360 to support VB.NET code in its interpreter as well, everything would be platform independent as originally intended.

[gep13]

YAY! Now if only they'd update the XBOX360 to support VB.NET code in its interpreter as well, everything would be platform independent as originally intended.

Jenner, do you do a lot of XNA development? This is an area that I have never played in.

Gary

[Jenner]

Jenner, do you do a lot of XNA development? This is an area that I have never played in.

Gary

I dabble pretty hard. I've written a few small arcade games (reproductions of classic games such as Tetris, Pac Man, Space Invaders, etc) and have been working on my first "unique" project now off and on for about a year.

The only reason XNA is touted as "C# only" is because it's designed not only for the PC, but also the XBOX360; and the XBOX360's runtime can't interpret VB.NET code. Of course, the PC's certainly can.

XNA is geared a little too much for XBOX360 to tell you the truth; though XNA 4.0 is supposedly geared for Windows Phone 7's. When I develop, I develop for PC exclusively and am usually combining XNA with a game engine like TorqueX or FlatRedBall.

I'm excited that they're putting general language support for VB.NET in the phones, but whether XNA 4.0 will require C# code or not like XNA 3.1 does for XBOX 360 development, I don't know the specifics of.

If XNA 4.0 is going to require C#, it's kinda like a backhand to the VB.NET community saying "You can use VB.NET to develop for the Windows Phone 7, oh, but if you want to make a game for it with XNA, you need to use C#..."

As I said though, I don't know the specifics.

[techgnome]

If you look at the templates closely... even just the names of them... they are actually built upon Silverlight (Silverlight for Windows Phone is the template group name). So it may not actually be XNA-based after all. Which is why I think VB support for WP7 happened so quickly. At least for apps. I'm not in the loop when it comes to XNA, so I'm not sure I can begin to guess what's going on there.

-tg

[Jenner]

As it stands now, with Visual Studio, I can easily make an XNA game solution template by making a C# project launch the game and contain the Content pipeline; and a VB.NET class library which has everything else including my game object. It works beautifully because I have all the capability of XNA in a VB.NET package; including the C# only content pipeline junk which allows me to define SpriteFonts, shaders and oddball things like that. Just makes me wonder what hoops I'll have to jump through to get XNA 4.0 to work with VB.NET.

[gep13]

Hey,

I honestly didn't realise there was so much to think about in this arena, as I said, it isn't something that I have looked into.

Thanks for the info though

Gary

[DeanMc]

It would be nice to see a bit of unity from MS on this front.

[Nightwalker83]

I would be making a request to your lecturer

I might just do that! I find it easier learn one language at a time rather than juggling two or three.

[gep13]

I might just do that! I find it easier learn one language at a time rather than juggling two or three.

Agreed. There is certainly no harm in asking. It might be the case that it simply isn't possible, I know there could be some issues with getting applications deployed to handsets, as you can't do that until the handset is unlocked, but I would still ask all the same.

Gary