Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools RTM, etc.

With all due respect to Steve Martin, “The new phone tools are here!  The new phone tools are here!”

Following up on my recent presentations introducing development for Windows Phone 7 with Silverlight, the release of the RTM version of the Windows Phone 7 to the public today was announced today, along with a couple other key items.  First and foremost, the new tools can be found here.  The “normal” download is a web-based installer, but there is a tiny link at the bottom of the page for downloading an ISO image.  The RTM includes the long awaited (by some) Panorama, Pivot, and Map controls, with Panorama and Pivot being backed by specific starter-project templates in both Visual Studio and Blend.  The Panorama control enables the presentation of content on a long horizontal canvas through which the phone display serves as a viewport (think of the Panorama Control as the ruler portion of a slide-rule, and the phone as the central strip.)  The Pivot control can be thought as the equivalent of the Tab-Control for the phone.  Finally, the Map control presents the Bing Maps Silverlight control to the phone.  More information on using Bing Map controls (outside of the phone, but there is some translation…) can be found here.

There are some subtle breaking changes in the new toolkit, and they are outlined in the Release Notes, which are also available for download from the download page.

Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit

Also announced today was the release of the Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit (yes, that name is certainly a mouthful.)  The toolkit release includes several additional controls for the phone, including a ContextMenu, Date & Time Pickers, a ToggleSwitch (think on/off light-switch), and a Wrap Panel.  The toolkit also includes the Gesture Listener, which allows some common touch-based gestures to be easily hookup to event handlers right in the phone page’s Xaml markup.  The Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit can be downloaded here, and general Silverlight Toolkit information can be found here.  As with the other Silverlight Toolkits, the Source Code is available for download, as is a Sample Application.  While the phone’s version of the sample browser is maybe not as slick as the “regular” Silverlight Toolkit’s (including source code visible directly in the application), it is still a great help.  The Sources and Sample code can be found here.

More Free Jump-Start Webinars

In July, a series of Jump-Start webinars were produced which have been posted to Channel 9 as 12 hours’ worth of videos.  Also announced today is an additional webinar series which will offer a deeper look at Windows Phone 7 development, including using the new Panorama, Pivot, and Map controls, Application Performance, Blend, and a live Q&A.  The live webinar will span 7 hours on Tuesday, September 21 2010, and registration is available here.  The original content is posted at Channel 9 here, with this content hopefully soon to follow.