Chris Ismael

Check out this blog post by Bok on how you can create theme friendly buttons in WP7. He outlines how you can make sure your icon buttons are still visible after users have customized their phone color themes. This is also particularly important for the Marketplace certification process where these conditions are tested, to determine whether your app and its UI elements are still visible after user customizations. Here’s a snippet of Bok’s post. I’ll let you click to his entire post. Also check out his app up on Marketplace – “Currency 7” ...

24 chapters of 1,000 pages of WP7 development goodness, for free! Also worth mentioning, Silverlight MVP Michael Sync was mentioned in the post above. You have to click it to see it! We’d also like to remind everyone that you can contact the following if you are looking for a Windows Phone 7 training here in Singapore: Appscellent – http://www.appscellent.com/blog Avantus Training – contact mindywong@avantustraining.com Wei Meng Lee – contact weimenglee@learn2develop.net Free tools, free ebook, and the phones are out! (We’re also loaning test devices to eager WP7 developers, and providing early access to Marketplace). ...

In hist first series of Windows Phone 7 articles on mobiForge, Windows Phone Development MVP Wei-Meng Lee brings us on a development journey to explore the full capabilities of the new Windows Phone 7 OS. You may remember Wei-Meng in the previous WP7 posts here and here. In this first installment, he explores the tools and shows us how we can start writing our first application quickly. Check out his inaugural article here on Windows Phone 7 – http://mobiforge.com/developing/story/introduction-windows-phone-7-development. ...

Hi guys! Developers here in Singapore are also hard at work in polishing and getting their games and apps published in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. Here’ a quick glimpse at some of them. Be sure to check out their links as well! Armor Valley – Combat strategy game ported from Xbox (Indie games). Included in the Xbox Live games on Windows Phone Dino Parade – tower defense-like game with dinosaurs, penguins, toasters, gatling guns, and UFO’s! ...

Hi folks! We have a couple of cool updates today. Windows Phone Developer Tools Final Release The Windows Phone Developer Tools RTM is out! That means you can now download the final release of the tools at http://developer.windowsphone.com/ and start reading refreshed content at MSDN to find out what’s new. Popular among developers in this final release are the Panorama and Pivot controls which lets you quickly build beautiful Metro-themed applications. ...

UPDATE: Training agenda and venue updated here - http://wp7sg.community.officelive.com/CreatingAppsforWP7UsingSilverlight.aspx Hot on the heels of our recently successful WP7 XNA training, we are providing you with another Windows Phone 7 2-day Hands on Lab on Aug 12 – 13. This time we’ll teach you how to create apps for WP7 using Silverlight. We are still polishing the agenda, but you can start to register here. (You know the drill, provide us with a good reason for us to secure you a slot ) ...

*IMPORTANT UPDATE* For those who have received confirmation for Day 2 training, we are moving to Avantus Training. Address below: Avantus Training 79 Robinson Road CPF Building 068897 ==== Developers! Want to learn how you can create games for Windows Phone 7 using XNA? We have just the session for you. We have limited seats so start registering here! Creating Games for Windows Phone 7: Jump Start Day 1 (Maximum 60 seats) July 29, 2010 9.00am – 9.15am ...

Good news everyone! Last night at the Worldwide Partner Conference 2010 in Washington, DC, we have released the Beta version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools. You might remember that our last update prior to this was the April CTP version. So what does this mean to you developers? If you are currently building on the April CTP version, you may want to uninstall that and install the Beta version from http://developer.windowsphone.com/ . For those who have not downloaded it yet, now’s the good time to install. It’s important to go through the breaking changes listed in the release notes, but you can also check Jaime Rodriguez’ “Migrating apps from Windows Phone April CTP Refresh to the beta build” for easier reading. Everyone’s been asking us where they could attend a WP7 training. Well aside from the Training Kit, forums, and other resources to help you skill up on WP7 development, you can register for these free virtual WP7 Jump Start trainings scheduled from July 20 – July 22. Click here to register! A lot of you also inquired if they can get their own device to test on. That’s a bit of a challenge right now. But through the WP7 Call for Proposal which we ran recently, we were able to identify companies who are serious in building WP7 apps, and pick out the ones who will be prioritized for these devices. We are now engaging with most of them on a 1-to-1 basis. Take note: ...

We’ve got something really cool for you guys this June! James Senior (Microsoft’s “Social Web Guy”) is flying to Singapore to deliver a developer camp-style event called Web Camp. What is Web Camp? Web Camp is a free 2-day web developer event intended to educate web developers about the Microsoft Web Platform, including trending topics like ASP.NET MVC Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, Entity Framework, IIS, Visual Studio 2010 and much more. Who should go to Web Camp? Web Camp is for all web developers. Whether you’re currently working with PHP, Ruby, ASP or older versions of ASP.NET; or if you want to be updated with the new technologies on the Microsoft Web Platform, in an interactive environment where you can get down and dirty with your fellow web developers amongst Microsoft experts, then the Microsoft Web Camp is for you. Registrations are open! Check out the agenda and register here. See you there!

Last week (May 13), we launched the Windows Phone 7 Call for Proposal with Expara under the i.Match BizMatch program. i.Match BizMatch is a platform that facilitates collaboration opportunities between Media Content and Digital Media (IDM) companies by introducing them to leading industry partners. Aspiring applicants for the WP7 CFP will receive technical guidance/training from the Microsoft Innovation Centre, as well as access to hardware and software resources to support their WP7 development process. The event was opened by Douglas Abrams from Expara, and followed by myself to discuss about the support provided by the CFP. A total of 8 companies did a verbal pitch in front of Microsoft panelists, who are all involved with Windows Phone 7. As promised, we had a hearty pizza and networking session right after. All in all, it was a successful event and we look forward to working with the interested parties we have met. The deadline for submission is June 30th. You can check this previous post here to check out the details of the CFP and upcoming WP7 events. If you are keen to submit, please fill up the form here and send it to the email address indicated in the form. (Tip: We really would love to see some prototypes running on the emulator, so it’s a big plus if you can include snapshots) That’s about it! And for developers out there, we’ve included below some really useful links and tips to aid you on your WP7 development. (Don’t forget to check out the upcoming WP7 events here, and a link to my Source Code folder in this post.) Useful links and tips: ...