Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Beta Released

Earlier today we shipped the beta of the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools.  You can download them here.

What is included in the Windows Phone Developer Tools

The Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta includes:

  • Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone – a new free, express edition of Visual Studio 2010
  • Express Blend for Windows Phone – a new free, edition of Blend focused on Windows Phone 7 development
  • Silverlight for Windows Phone 7
  • XNA Game Studio for Windows Phone 7

Integrated with the development tools is a phone emulator that enables you to easily develop and test Windows Phone 7 applications on your laptop or desktop machine – without requiring a phone device.  It is hardware accelerated, supports multi-touch events on multi-touch capable monitors, and provides a really easy way to debug and try out your phone applications.

Devices for Developers

In addition to testing applications within the emulator, we are also this month starting to ship pre-release phones to developers.  You can learn more about this program and sign-up to receive one from this blog post from the Windows Phone 7 team.

Learning More

I previously blogged a nice step-by-step tutorial that covers how to build a Twitter search application using Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone.  It provides a nice introduction on how you can easily use Silverlight and the Visual Studio Tools for Windows Phone to quickly build applications.  You can read and follow the tutorial here.

Read today’s blog post from the Windows Phone 7 team which provides more details on today’s release. It also mentions two new Silverlight controls – a Panorama and Pivot control - which will enable you to easily implement the new Windows Phone 7 navigation style.  These controls are not implemented in today’s beta, but will be released as an update in a few weeks.

If you have used the previous Windows Phone 7 CTPs, also make sure to read Jaime’s Migrating Applications from the Windows Phone April CTP Refresh to the Beta blog post.  It provides a wealth of details on how to update code that you’ve already written.

Uninstalling Previous CTP Bits

Update: Some people have reported problems with uninstalling the previous CTP of the Windows Phone 7 Developer tools.  Amit has a blog post here that discusses how to fix this. Aaron also has a blog post that discusses how to remove XNA Game Studio in the event that you have a partial install of it that you need to clean up.

Hope this helps,

Scott

P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

52 Comments

  • Great news Scott!!!

  • I'll give it a try .... assuming I can actually get the CTP to uninstall. Been working on it for the past hour. Now, uninstalling Silverlight 4 ...

  • XAP Deployment Tool looks amazing,Nice to know Panorama and Pivot coming soon.Great work by MS once again :)

  • Did anyone over at Microsoft actually test uninstalling the CTP? Why does UNINSTALL want me to install XNA studio, which then fails. Frankly, this is not up to the standards I expect of Microsoft.

  • Scott, do you know if they got to support LINQ in this version?
    Thanks!
    ..Ben

  • @Robert,

    >>>>>>>> I'll give it a try .... assuming I can actually get the CTP to uninstall. Been working on it for the past hour.

    Sorry you are running into uninstall problems. If you can send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) I can have someone help you.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • I wonder how one can get an actual hardware to test ones application's feel ... ;)

  • Thanks Scott

  • uninstalling the CTP and updating XNA wether linq support is integrated does not change the fact that Scott rules. Panorama and Pivot? This is great news, imagine all the possibilities...there is nothing that cannot be done with tools this powerful.

  • Screenshot on the top is the old one and not from this Beta, isn't it?

  • I also have problems uninstalling. When I select uninstall it wants me to *install* XNA studio, which i removed independantly. When I try to reinstall the CTP (thinking maybe its the lack of the XNA studio that is screwing up the uninstall) it wont reinstall since Microsoft seems to have removed access to it. I want to try out the Beta but simply cant at this stage.

  • Thanks Scott, great tools and I've just ran through your tutorial, the emulator runs really quick. Time to get this working with my sites.

  • So here is the deal MS. You know that you are way at the bottom of list when it comes to mobile. iPhone rules the planet followed by Android and others. So rather than releasing these beta tools which may or may not work, why don't you show us the stuff including developer tools when they ready. This way you'll build confidence and win back support of developers who are running away to other platforms.

    If you think that by releasing beta of Windows Phone 7 developer tools you are building excitement then I'm sorry to say that you are completely wrong. While you were trying to work out what to do with Windows Mobile unfortunately the game and it's rules changed. Let's play the new game by new rules :)

  • Since this apparently doesn't support VB, I don't suppose it supports Delphi Prism or any other .net language. I certainly hope Windows Phone 7 promotes the language agnosticism that is SUPPOSED to be part of .net and doesn't follow the pattern of Silverlight Ria services.

  • When will Visual Basic be supported?

  • Great news, I have been waiting for a while. But....
    Why only Windows 7 support? Please add Windows 2003 at least. Also I can't find any documentation about installation when you already have VS2010 Pro/Ultimate and Expression Studio 4 installed, since I am an MSDN subscriber.

  • Please offer an offline installation option. Due to bandwidth contraints, it's far better for me to download once and install from some form of portable media (portable hard drives, dvds, etc). The web install is also failing on Windows Server 2008R2 x64.

  • Will this get installed in parallel with the vs2010 + expression stuidio 4 that are already installed on the computer?

  • does this all work with XP? previously I couldnt develop WP 7 on XP.

  • MOre and more i'm tempted to give up my Android phone for a W7 phone... and everyone is thinking: "What specs are these phones going to have"....

  • Great stuff I just can't get enough they say you learn something new every day the day you stop is the beginning of the end for those of us who develop on the Microsoft stack we're
    sure to live to be a 100 with endless opportunity
    Great stuff team Microsoft keep it comming the rest of the world can just catch up

  • Great tools, just one remark: tt would be very nice if the tools were an actual download, not a web installer. Now I have to download them for every machine I upgrade. Not very convinient.

  • @Robert and Others,

    >>>>>> Regarding uninstall isues

    Amit has a blog post here that discusses how to fix this: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/amit_chopra/archive/2010/05/04/uninstall-issues-with-the-mix-ctp-drop.aspx

    Aaron also has a blog post that discusses how to remove XNA Game Studio in the event that you have a partial install of it that you need to clean up: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2009/04/10/9544320.aspx

    Let me know if you still have problems after reading these two posts (via email at: scottgu@microsoft.com) and I can have someone help you out directly.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • @thomas,

    >>>>>> Screenshot on the top is the old one and not from this Beta, isn't it?

    Correct - although I think they look the same. I just re-used an old screen-shot I used from a previous post :-)

    Good catch,

    Scott

  • @IanTrem,

    >>>>>>>> Thanks Scott, great tools and I've just ran through your tutorial, the emulator runs really quick.

    Cool! One of the things my team has been working on has been optimizing the first-time load time of the emulator. It is now much faster than before.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • @Mark, @VB Coder,

    >>>>>>>> When will Visual Basic be supported?

    Unfortunately the VB runtime library isn't supported on Windows Phone 7 just yet. We are planning to enable it in the future though.

    Sorry about that,

    Scott

  • @ozz,

    >>>>>>>>> does this all work with XP? previously I couldnt develop WP 7 on XP.

    Unfortunately I don't believe it works with XP. The emulator uses some of the newer graphics capabilities in Windows which I believe is the reason this isn't supported.

    Sorry!

    Scott

  • Hi Scott,

    You mentioned that you can't develop on XP machines due to the emulator using the new graphics capabilities of the newer Windows OS. Does this mean that Windows Server 2008 R2 will continue to be un supported as well? I can't be the only one running 2008 R2 and want to look at Mobile dev. As its a very new OS surely it has the graphics capabilities?

    Cheers,
    A

  • Cool! ...but when I run the app I get an exception.
    System.Security.SecurityException at System.Net.Browser.AsyncHelper.BeginOnUI(SendOrPostCallback beginMethod, Object state)
    at System.Net.Browser.BrowserHttpWebRequest.EndGetResponse(IAsyncResult asyncResult)
    at System.Net.WebClient.GetWebResponse(WebRequest request, IAsyncResult result)
    at System.Net.WebClient.DownloadBitsResponseCallback(IAsyncResult result)

    Anybody please?

  • New tool work great can't wait to get my hands on a real device. What are the plans for Zune HD development seems like it stops dead at XNA studio 3.1 ?

  • Can this run inside a virtual machine? The first release could but was slow and bombed out when running xna apps.

  • @Shane: I think that is exactly the case. The XNA 4.0 beta docs state that the Zune is not a supported platform any longer, and there certainly isn't any sign that that will change for RTM.

    @Scott: Mind applying a bit of pressure on the XNA guys to bring their docs over to the new help system before RTM?

  • Funny how you did not approve my comment where I criticized this beta.

  • Scott,
    You guys really need to re-evaluate your installer strategy. Every dev product I install results in a lot of spearate packages in the add/remove programs. When you release an update you put a line in release notes about uninstalling the previous version, but there's no way to do that with one installer like a normal program, instead I have to guess which packages I'm supposed to uninstall.

    Until today this was annoying but I went through it anyway but with this WP7 deb tools beta, when I uninstalled the CTP refresh, I uninstalled the emulator and VS plug in and then saw the tools and when I tried uninstalling that, the next screen asks to install those two packages back, which fails for some reason. so now I'm unable to install the new version with our messing around with the registry (which will probably still leave files behind).

    I love the MS dev tools and think VS is the best IDE around, but these little things are frustrating.

  • The Gu's greatness just depresses me...

  • hi,

    is a VB.net version going to be released soon? Is there a date for this....?

  • I'm very excited to test this new release from Microsoft! Its been too long since the last release!

  • Installed the beta tools on top of an existing VS 2010 Ultimate installation. Don't do that.
    First a bluescreen during setup (don't know during which step exactly). But afterwards I could continue the installation and everything installed fine, but now when opening VS 2010 and creating new projects you can't select anything. All project templates are gone.

  • This is awesome! Cant wait to get on a real device

  • Why do we always have to go through the same vb_vm.exe download bootstrapper process and don't you simply offer an offline installation option instead...It would be much simpler and practical.

  • Thanks...

  • Scott the toolkit seems to require windows vista or 7.
    We use windows 2003 server and vs2010. Anyway to install it on this config?

  • I have full VS2010 Proefessional and Expression Studio 4.0 installed.
    Can I install these Windows Mobile 7 Beta Express tools alongside ? It is not clear - I am worried by previous comment about thiss install removing .NET 4 !
    I still need to be developing my cor desktop/web apps, alongside Mobile Apps.

    What is the approach for developers like me. (and Please no Virtual machines)

  • @Jules - I just installed this on top of Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Studio 4.0 and didn't seem to have any problems with it so far. Was able to utilize different functionalities such as C#/Web/WP7/and etc.

  • @Jules I don't have Expression Studio but I do have VS2010 Pro. Installing the tools beta didn't make VS pack up and leave town, and I'm pretty sure that Expression won't take a hike on your machine.

  • Why not offer the actual Windows phone 7 complete run time environment as a package we can download and install on a phone to check how it works? This seems to work well for hackers and other OS users... hint, hint...

  • I am excited about developing for Mobile 7, but I was disappointed to learn about the lack of standard ux functionality....multitask and copy/paste. So although I will be developing, I don't think I will be purchasing until that is resolved.

  • Just noticed the re-release that includes a downloadable iso. Thanks! Still no Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 :-(

  • Dev OS Requirement of the SDK : WinVis or Win7 !!!

    Great, MS guys did you knoww that most corp dev are still under XP. This SDK is useless for most enterprise people. Immediate impact will be to delay (or even cancel) WP7 enterprise application in most company.

    Oh, and apparently you can not push hybrid application to the market as a third party dev. This means limited code reuse, hence cost increase for WP7 application production.

    Did you noticed also that OpenGL ES is not supported (!!!) ? Which means all 3D widget/stack/application have to be rewritten to DX. Again more cost.

    And nothing about HTML 5 :(

    Too much cost, not much audience when compared to iOS or Andoid, I am affraid :(

  • Really need XP support. My company is still stuck on XP and will be for quite a bit longer.

  • Good job on WP 7 Beta. I have a small question - The System.Diagnostics.Process is not found in WP 7. Is there any other way to run a .exe from a C# Program ?

    Any help would be appreciated.

    Thanks.

  • Please add support for Windows Server 2008!!!

Comments have been disabled for this content.