Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 (Beta) install

[Updated 25-May-2011]

Introduction

The beta of the ‘Mango’ Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 is ready for download here: vm_web2.exe (the installer). I thought it would appear here App Hub Downloads but apparently not so far [UPDATE: download page has been refreshed]. If you have not done so you will also want to register here App Hub.

 

Final release announced on all devices in the Fall 2011. Mango developer devices to ship on July 19th. We will track the progress in this blog article until the final release.

 

Download and Install

 

You will need to exit Visual Studio and Zune applications before the installation will proceed. The full download looks to be 491 MB. You will also need VS2010 SP1 just as for the Silverlight 5 Beta.

Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 (Beta) Mango!

Some of the consumer features:

• Smarter Apps & Live Tiles
• Groups
• Local Scout
• App Connect
• Internet Explorer 9
• Threads
• Multi-tasking
• People-centric pictures
• Quick Cards
• Enhanced Hubs
  

  Mango - Internet Beyond the browser

 New API’s in Silverlight for Windows Phone OS 7.1 on MSDN Library – its big, very big!

New Visual Studio Project Templates

Go open up VS2010 ‘New Project’ and…

Silverlight for Windows Phone templates

 Also XNA…

XNA templates

Emulator Language Support

 

Full list is here! Now that is a whole lot better than before.

 

As promised, lots more display languages show up in the settings of the emulator, plenty more regional setting and system locales, at last…

Mango Emulator Display Languages

Plenty more…

Many more display languages in Mango

And here is an example of a warm Dutch welcome to the settings page Mango style… 

Windows Phone Settings in Dutch NL

 And if you so desire here is IE9 in the emulator running Bing search under the chinese zh-MO system setting…

WP7 Mango IE Bing Search in chinese zh-MO apparently

 

Feedback

Good things…

• Makes NoDo look like Windows Phone V0.1 software
• Wp Tools 7.0 and 7.1 work side by side @mikehole
• More app samples than you can shake a stick at
• App Connect, Local Scout and Quick Cards > location aware
• Synergy between XNA and Silverlight in hybrid apps
• Local Database for Windows Phone
• Camera Applications for Windows Phone

 

Gotchas…

• Internet Explorer Mobile 9 is DOA Without Touch Support
• Exceptions with ReSharper 9?
• Non-USA data for Local Scout?
• Debugging Xaml Data Bindings – works for SL4/SL5 not phone
• Checked French and saw some string resources not translated (yet) in settings!

 

Further things to do

We will update this blog article with news, bug details, resources links and feedback as it becomes available.

• APP HUB News Details 
• Follow on The Windows Phone Developer Blog
• Update MSDN Windows Phone Development
• MSDN documentation on New API’s
• MVVM Light Toolkit patch from Laurent Bugnion
• Culture and Language Support – MSDN
• Xpert360 Ltd – who allow time for blogging

Conclusion

This article is a brief guide to download the ‘Mango’ Microsoft Windoes Phone Developer Tools 7.1 (Beta) released on 24th May 2011.

 

Any comments or request for future topics are welcome.

 

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We are really looking forward to MIX11 and with 207 sessions to choose from, we decided to take a couple of hours and put together a Pivot collection to provide a little help with narrowing down exactly which sessions you want to vote for.

Run the Silverlight MIX11 OPEN CALL application. As with all silverlight apps, works fine on most browsers and OS.

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Visualization of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace with PivotViewer

We had to take a break from blogging to allow us to catch up on work commitments. Meanwhile we have some PivotViewer linked collections deployed at the WP7 App Hub website. These collections are only a place holder for now whilst the behind the scenes infrastructure is finalised for automated build of the dynamic JIT collections for the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace applications.

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The marketplace is fragmented and difficult to navigate but not for much longer…

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WP7 Raw Deal for Non-US applications

WP7 Marketplace ratings – Raw deal for non-US applications

Are non-US applications getting a raw deal in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace?

Update 14-Dec-2010: Bing support staff sent an email saying they have a fix to ‘keyword’ search which should be rolled out later this week… It now looks like for the UK (en-GB) it is working with 3000 top apps. The keyword search appears fixed so all apps should now be searchable. So we are left with fr-FR, de-DE etc. ratings not showing. Some progress!

Absolutely! After using Europe as the ‘Guinea pigs’ in the Windows Phone 7 rollout saga Microsoft has left European WP7 developers out in the cold.

Mostly to blame is ‘Bing Visual Search’ (deservedly). Why call it ‘Search’ when it is impossible to ever find 1000 of the apps that are in the marketplace. As for ‘premier search engine’, this part certainly is woefully short of that. This is no search at all, any new apps have a brief day in the limelight, if lucky, before they sink to the depths of the marketplace. #bad => restriction to top 3000 apps in the USA ratings…

You may think, so what! My German, French, etc… users love my app and my ratings prove it. You could have lots of downloads and 5-star ratings and Bing would not care to rank you in the top 3000 apps, yeah right, that sucks! But do you believe me, well here is an affected application which is actually quite good, as in the non-USA en-US ratings say so, but Bing gives it 1-star (by 2 users) – this is an absolute joke, I feel for the publisher.

Here is Bing: Rating 1-star (by 2 users)
Bing Visual Search?

Bing Visual Search no use to non-USA residents.

Zune en-GB – the Brits like it a bit better!

Zune WP7 Marketplace for Tube Companion

But here is the true picture:

True WP7 Marketplace Ratings

http://wp7reviews.tomverhoeff.com/AppReviews.aspx?id=e93f1aac-c9d6-df11-a844-00237de2db9e&mp=en-US

You can see the two en-US feedbacks as opposed to the 29 x en-GB and one de-DE feedbacks.

Conclusion: Microsoft, Bing, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, you seriously need to get your act together. View it, read it and weep.

There was a partly working version of Bing Visual Search for the en-GB and de-DE regions but it was withdrawn by Microsoft on 9th December 2010 without notice.
Thanks to Tom Verhoeff for http://wp7reviews.tomverhoeff.com/ ratings page.

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Windows Phone 7 – WP7 LOB App Dev

Don’t you love all the new acronyms! Well maybe not for everyone. Interested in LOB then also look at #TEE10 MEAP, MEAP! Sounds like the roadrunner cartoon.

With all this Windows Phone 7 goodness around all those blogs and videos can be pretty overwhelming. At heart we are games developers but in reality we are LOB application developers and for some odd reason we never came across Rob Tiffany’s blog until this week. We think it needs a plug.

It is so full of WP7 goodness that I thought it was worth re-blogging links to his series of articles. The articles ‘do what they say on the tin’, enough said.

Rob Tiffany
Thoughts on Mobility, Wireless, Entrepreneurship, Writing, Speaking, Wine, Strategy and Architecture

20-JUL-2010 Windows Phone 7 Line of Business App Dev :: The Overview Video

27-SEP-2010 Windows Phone 7 Line of Business App Dev :: Building a WCF REST + JSON Service

15-OCT-2010 Windows Phone 7 Line of Business App Dev :: Moving your WCF REST + JSON Service to Windows Azure

27-OCT-2010 Windows Phone 7 Line of Business App Dev :: Consuming an Azure WCF REST + JSON Service

05=-NOV-2010 Windows Phone 7 Line of Business App Dev :: Working with an In-Memory Database

Hope you like them too. Many thanks to Rob for sharing them…