Hello Windows Phone

This lab intends to be the classic "Hello World" application, introducing you to the tools and procedures required to build and test Silverlight for Windows Phone applications. During the lab, you will see how to use Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phones along with Expression Blend to build and design your Windows Phone applications, and how to deploy and debug your Windows Phone applications on the Windows Phone Emulator.

Overview

This lab aims to present the classic “Hello World” application, introducing you to the tools and procedures required to build and test Silverlight for Windows Phone applications. The Windows Phone Application Platform enables:

• Awesome applications and games. Use Silverlight and XNA frameworks to craft interactive, compelling, high-quality applications and games for the Windows Phone 7.
• Fast, high quality, and feature-rich applications. The combination of Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend with standardized Windows Phone 7 hardware specifications means more time is available for you to make your vision real on every device.
• Bigger opportunities. Better partnerships. Build exciting applications and games with your current skills and tools for Windows Phone 7, and reach customers no matter what device they use. Windows Phone Marketplace takes care of sales and distribution so you don’t have to. Code and collect!

During the course of the lab, you will see how to use Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone and Expression Blend to build and design your Windows Phone applications. Visual Studio provides an environment oriented towards application developers whereas Expression Blend is more suited to user experience (UX) designers. The tools complement each other and enable extensive designer/developer collaboration.

This lab demonstrates a typical development scenario, where you initially create application logic and lay out pages and controls for your Windows Phone application in Visual Studio, and then design the user experience using Expression Blend by applying styles and animations to pages and controls. In this lab, you learn about the structure of a Windows Phone application and find out how to use Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) to create the user interface (UI) for your application. XAML is a declarative language; it's the primary format for declaring a Silverlight UI and the elements in that UI. Finally, you learn how to deploy and debug your Windows Phone application on the Windows Phone Emulator.

Objectives

The audience for this lab is developers who have some familiarity with Microsoft tools, such as Visual Studio, and is relatively new to Silverlight. If you are comfortable with the Silverlight programming model and already work with Visual Studio and the Microsoft Expression suite, you may consider skipping this lab. On the other hand, if you are completely new to Silverlight, we highly recommend that you enrich your Silverlight skills by first reviewing some Silverlight labs that can be found at https://silverlight.net/learn/. Furthermore, if you are unfamiliar with Visual Studio as a working environment, we recommend that you start by getting to know this environment with the help of the documentation at https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd831853.aspx.

In this hands-on lab, you will:

• Become familiar with the Windows Phone SDK 7.1: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone and Windows Phone Emulator. These tools are all you need to create and test any managed Windows Phone application.
• Use Microsoft Expression Blend for Windows Phone to enhance the user experience of your application by applying styles and animations.
• Learn the structure underlying a Silverlight for Windows Phone application and the differences between Silverlight and Silverlight for Windows Phone.
• Write, test, deploy, and debug your Silverlight for Windows Phone application using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone and the Windows Phone Emulator.

Prerequisites

The following are required to complete this hands-on lab:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone or Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
• Microsoft Expression Blend for Windows Phone or Microsoft Expression Blend 4 with Microsoft Expression Blend Add-In for Windows Phone
• Windows Phone SDK 7.1
  Note:

  All of these Tools can be downloaded together in a single package from https://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9772716

Exercises

This hands-on lab includes the following exercises:

1. Creating Windows Phone Applications with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
2. Using Expression Blend to Design the UX for your Windows Phone Application

Estimated time to complete this lab: 45 minutes.