Windows Phone 7 is the newcomer to the smartphone playing field. Although Microsoft has
been in the smartphone game for a while, earlier entries were attempts to squeeze desktop
features of Windows into small devices and didn’t pay off. Windows Phone 7, however, is a
new OS designed specifically for smartphones; it features tight integration with Microsoft
Office and Outlook.
Windows Phone 7 uses C#, the most advanced programming language of all the platforms
discussed in this book. If Objective-C is a step backward from the industry-standard Java, C#
is, in many ways, a look into the future. It has incorporated the best of Java and addressed
many shortfalls.
Windows Phone 7 also uses Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 as its IDE, which is easy to use and
powerful. Microsoft helps developers create useful apps because it recognized long ago that
users adopt platforms because of the apps they run. As you’ve learned, Apple has used this
concept to dominate the small-device market.
Windows Phone 7 apps come in two types: Silverlight and XNA Games. You can build
both types of apps with the Windows Phone 7 SDK and Visual Studio 2010 Express for
Windows Phone 7, but this book covers only Silverlight apps. Silverlight is a
development platform for creating interactive apps for the Web, desktops, and mobile
devices. This free plug-in powered by the .NET Framework is compatible across several
browsers, devices, and OSs. The Silverlight for Windows Phone version supports core
Silverlight features and adds capabilities specific to Windows Phone 7. Silverlight
features that don’t make sense for small devices have been omitted. Its features include
the following: