Windows Phone 7 the Belle of the Ball
With its noticeable absence from PDC 2008 and 2009, it appeared that Windows Mobile had all but been abandoned. Yes and no. Windows Mobile is no more . Say hello to Windows Phone.
The opening keynote for Mix 2010 was all about Windows Phone 7. If it weren’t patently obvious from the various leaks and pseudo announcements, WP7 uses Silverlight as the primary developer platform. It also supports XNA for game development.
The developer tools for Windows Phone 7 are Free. Included in the tools:
- Visual Studio 2010 Express
- Blend 4 for Windows Phone
- XNA Studio 4 for Windows Phone
- Windows Phone 7 Device Emulator
All the tools except Blend 4 are included in one handy installer And Christian Schormann shows where you can get the Blend tools here.
The keynote will be available for download tomorrow (in case you missed it). There are a ton of features for Windows Phone 7 that were highlighted in the keynote (I’ll provide a synopsis later). But why are you waiting for me to tell you? Go download it yourself!