We have already seen in the earlier tutorial series on Windows Phone 7 on how to build a simple application like Hello Phone and deploy it . In this tutorial series I will guide you more gradually on a day-by-day basis, through all the concepts and features of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango OS.

Links to all the parts of this tutorial series:

1. Learn to Develop Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Applications: Part 1
2. Developing Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Applications: Part 2 (HelloWorld app)
3. Developing Windows Phone 7.5 Apps: Part 3; Variables, Data Types And Assigning Values
4. Developing Windows 7.5 Mango Apps, Part 4: if statement
5. Developing Windows 7.5 Mango Apps, Part 5: Operators, expressions, statements
6. Developing Windows 7.5 Mango Apps, Part 6: Switch Statement
7. Developing Windows Phone Mango Apps, Part 7: for iterations
8. Using Simple Helper Methods while developing Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Apps: Part 8
9. Working With Strings: Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Apps Development – Part 9
10. Working With DateTime: Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Apps Development – Part 10
11. Understanding and Creating Classes: Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Apps Development – Part 11
12. Working With Classes: Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Apps Development – Part 12
13. Understanding Namespaces: Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Apps Development – Part 13
14. Collection of Objects: Windows Phone Apps Development Turorial – Part 14
15. Understanding XAML: Windows Phone Apps Development Turorial – Part 15
16. Silverlight Layout Controls: Windows Phone Apps Development Tutorial – Part 16
17. XAML Event And Input Controls: Windows Phone Apps Development Tutorial – Part 17
18. Working with the Image Control: Windows Phone Apps Development Tutorial – Part 18
19. Working With Styles And Resources: Windows Phone Apps Development Tutorial – Part 19
20. Apply style and theme resource to controls: Windows Phone Apps Development Tutorial – Part 20
21. Navigating Between XAML Pages: Windows Phone Apps Development Tutorial – Part 21
22. Working With The Application Bar: Windows Phone Apps Development Tutorial – Part 22
23. Using Canvas as a Dialog: Windows Phone Apps Development Tutorial – Part 23
24. Adding Different Inputscopes: Windows Phone Apps Development Tutorial – Part 24
25. GPS, Location API and Calling Web Services: Windows Phone Apps Development Tutorial – 25.

Specifically, in this tutorial series, I will be talking to you about and touching upon some development concepts like:

1. All basic concepts, keywords, variables
2. Debugging methods and breaks
3. Loops, decision making statements
4. Accepting input and providing output
5. Operators, statements and expressions
6. Methods and classes
7. String, datetime (predefined classes)
8. Little about namespaces, collections
9. How to use XAML code to design interface
10. Silverlight events, input controls
11. Image controls
12. Resources and styles
13. How to navigate between xaml pages
14. Application bar
15. Use of canvas and isolated storage
16. Tombstoning
17. Input scopes, GPS, Location API
18. Orientation change, control visibility
19. Some other minor topics which might need our attention in some situations

We have separated tutorials into 4 days, each day having a number of tutorials. At the end of the day we will do one simple assignment based on topic learn on that day. Now all set for it? Let’s start with the summary.

The newly evolved Windows Phone 7.5 OS provides some great opportunities for developers to develop various applications, both interactive and attractive, without making any big fuss about programming.

Microsoft has provided several ways in which a normal developer can use various cloud services, using Windows Azure technology platform, and thus make their application highly scalable, powerful and reliable in terms of memory usage and resources. Microsoft has provided all these services with only one goal in mind: to extend the functionalities of applications beyond traditional desktop or laptop and make them truly portable.

To make you aware about the functionality of this new and robust operating system, we are presenting you a series of tutorials which will teach you to develop a simple application for Windows Phone and in due course we shall look at all the important features also.

Tools required to develop Windows Phone Apps

In this particular tutorial, we shall look at all the tools that we will need through out the series and their system requirements.

To start with developing, you will first need Windows Phone 7 developer tool, which can be downloaded for free. If you already have MS Visual Studio installed, then this tool will be integrated into that else it will be installed as an independent tool.

Requirements:

• Windows Vista x86 or x64, with Service Pack 2 (all editions except Starter Edition) or Windows 7 x86 or x64 (all editions except Starter Edition)
• 4 GB of free disk space on the system drive
• 3 GB RAM
• Windows Phone Emulator requires a DirectX 10 or later graphics card.

Failing to satisfy any single requirement of this, may result in functional errors. If you have covered this much, good!

For those of you, who don’t have much idea about Windows Phone 7.5 OS, it uses two languages to build its applications. One is C#, which is a standard language for Microsoft’s .NET framework and another is XAML (Extensive Application Markup language). C# is used for writing program logic in backend whereas XAML is used mainly for designing the user interface.

Let us now have a look at the new project page of developer tool.

This page provides you total 5 options, which we will see one by one later. For the start choose first option reading “Windows Phone Application” and click on OK after providing a file name of your choice. Once you press OK, you will be presented with a developer page. It has three sections, one is XAML section, another is C# section and third one is solution explorer and visual section.

We shall see all about them in next tutorial but as we prepare our next tutorial, just get familiar with the interface and all the elements.