Recently, Microsoft has made another effort to engage developers with Windows Phone, especially for those who are novices or who are located in emerging markets. App Studio (Beta), is a web based windows phone application making tool, which allows developers to quickly create and publish their app in the Windows Phone Store with just four easy steps.

I think that App Studio is a great online tool to create and publish small personal applications. It can be an app for your favorite sport or a movie, it can be even for your city or family. I tried creating few apps with it, and prepared a workflow screenshot which show a bit about the system.

What are the four steps involved in app studio?

• General App Information
• App content configuration
• App style configuration
• Final! Generate the app

 

General App Information:

In this section you can Add Logo, Title and a Short description along with that you can select the default language of your app.

 

App Content configuration:

The main section of the app comes here. It’s all about functionality of your application. You can create menus, sections for various data source. What can be used as source for the data inside your app? It can be a RSS feed, YouTube channel, Flickr or even HTML.

(The screenshot shows the list of data source like RSS, YouTube and a HTML Page)

 

App style configuration:

Your app cannot be a complete thing without a proper look and feel. There is an option in app studio to define your app theme color (predefined as well as custom color), background images/colors etc. Along with that you can define your live tile and the splash screen.

 

Generate the app:

You’re almost done with your app. It’s the final step… In which you can Generate, Install and Test your app in your windows phone. There is an additional option to download the source code for further advanced coding, or else you can just download the compiles .xap file and publish in the Windows Phone Store.

In short, it not an exact alternative to Visual Studio, but it will be more fun and useful for seasoned developers. More experienced developers can use this for creating quick prototypes and then exporting the code to Visual Studio for more advanced work.

Start creating your own app @ http://apps.windowsstore.com

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