Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools for Visual Basic.NET CTP

Hi folks,

as stated in my earlier Blog post “Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools final version released”, Microsoft just released the Visual Basics CTP (Community Technology Preview = Beta version) for Windows Phone Developer Tools which you can download here.


To use the Visual Basics CTP for Windows Phone Developer Tools you need the Windows Phone Development Tools RTW (web installer or .iso image) as well as Visual Studio 2010 Professional or higher (90 day trial version). Furthermore you can only develop Silverlight apps using Visual Basics; XNA does not support Visual Basics as of now.

You can find the official release announcement on the Windows-Phone Blog. Additionally you can find some VB samples/tutorials for Windows Phone 7 on Jason Zanders Blog.

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Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools final version released

Hi folks,

Microsoft released the final version of the development tools for Windows Phone 7 last week. The tools are free and consist of the products:

• Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
• Expression Blend for Windows Phone
• XNA Game Studio for Windows Phone 7
• Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio
• Windows Phone Emulator

You can download the web installer here; the .iso image can be found here. The tools will only intall on Windows Vista and Windows 7. Microsoft will open the Windows Phone Marketplace at the beginning of October.


The current release of the Windows Phone 7 development tools is only available in English but Microsoft promises the release of the French, Italian, German and Spanish language versions in the near future.

As of now the application business logic has to be written in C# for both Silverlight and XNA. Visual Basic.NET support was announced to be released later this year.

The improvements over the beta version include new templates for pivot and panorama, improved debugging functionalities as well as French, Italian, Spanish, German and English support for the Windows Phone Emulator.

You can find the official release announcement on the Windows-Phone Blog. Further information and tutorials can be found on Scott Guthries Blog.

In addition you can download the Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit, which provides you with additional controls, from CodePlex.

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Is the .NET Compact Framework still alive? And what about Windows Embedded CE?

Hi Folks,

lately I’ve been hearing questions along that line more often. Probably mainly due to the fact that VS2010 does not support “Smart Device” application development (at least as of now, let’s hope that this will change) and also due to the announcement of the Windows Phone 7 Series Programming Model at the MIX 2010 conference. Just to recite the major aspects of that programming model: “The application model supported on Windows Phone 7 series will be managed only and will leverage Silverlight, XNA and the .NET Framework”.

From Abhinaba’s Blog you will see that there is a lot of work being done on the .NET Compact Framework, not only for Windows Phone 7 Series but also for Windows Embedded CE. By the way, Abhinaba also goes into details of the Windows Phone 7 Series Programming model as well as comparing it to the .NET Compact Framework 3.5. Thanks Abhinaba!

So to answer my question from the title: YES the .NET Compact Framework is still alive, so don’t worry!

Let’s have a look at Windows Embedded CE now. Again, due to the same reasons some people are worried that Windows Embedded CE will be discontinued, but don’t worry, the release for Windows Embedded Compact 7 is planned for later this year. But don’t take my word for it, just read Olivier Bloch’s post “Windows CE is NOT dead!”.

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Windows Phone 7 Series Development Tools Beta

On the Mix 10 conference, Microsoft announced the beta version of the development tools for Windows Phone 7 Series, the new OS from Microsoft succeeding Windows Mobile.


Applications for Windows Phone 7 Series can be developed using an enhanced version of Silverlight 3 or XNA, a tool chain to develop Xbox games. The also announced Silverlight 4 RC does not support development for Windows Phone 7 Series as of yet.

You can download the free Windows Phone 7 Series development tools beta version:

• Expression Blend for Windows Phone for Silverlight development
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone (preview version)
• Windows Phone Emulator
• XNA Game Studio 4.0 CTP

Windows Mobile 6.x applications are not compatible with Windows Phone 7 Series. As of now there is no official statement from Microsoft if and how these applications can be ported.

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