Documents leaked to the XDA-Developers forum reveal that Windows Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend are the primary tools for developing applications for Windows Phones.
Developer frameworks
The documents show that there are two frameworks available for developers to create applications. The first is the Silverlight UI framework for “event-driven, XAML based development.” The platform provides developers with the full features of Silverlight to develop mark-up based user experiences. The second is Microsoft’s XNA UI framework. This is primarily for loop-based games and allows developers to use the full power of the XNA gaming environment. XNA is a set of tools provided by Microsoft that allows game development. Announced in March 2004, the runtime is available for XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Xbox 360. XNA games can run on any platform that supports the XNA framework with little to no modification required.
Multitasking confirmed
In another document leaked to XDA-developers, Microsoft confirms that multitasking will be operational in Windows Phone 7:
“As a preemptive multitasking operating system (OS), Windows Phone OS 7.0 supports multiple processes running simultaneoulsy on the system. There is no limit to the number of processes that can run on the phone. The only limit is the amount of available system resources.”
Microsoft demonstrated the Windows Phone 7 UI earlier this week at Mobile World Congress. Company officials will speak more widely about features and development at the MIX 2010 conference in March next month.
On Tuesday Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010 RC and .NET Framework 4.0 RC to MSDN subscribers. Today, the company has made these releases available to the public.
Visual Studio is a development environment that allows developers to create GUI applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE, .NET Framework, .NET Compact Framework and Microsoft Silverlight.
There are no new features in the RC release from beta 2 and Microsoft has focussed on speed improvements. A Microsoft spokesperson stated: “We heard from customers that performance in Beta 2 wasn’t everything they had hoped it would be. The RC released today delivers enhanced performance and is an added milestone to garner even more customer feedback before the final build is released. Specifically, customers will see performance improvements in loading solutions, typing, building and debugging.”
Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 will launch in cities all over the world on April 12. Major events will be taking place in the UK, China, Malaysia, India, and in the US.
Microsoft announced today at PDC09 here in Los Angeles that they will be opening the .NET Micro Framework source code and also release the next version, 4.0. The release will be available under the Apache 2.0 license, something that is already being used inside the community.
Developers will be able to gain access to the Base Class Libraries that were implemented into the .NET Micro Framework and CLR code.
Both the TCP/IP and Cryptography libraries are not included in the source. Colin Miller told the developers that the reason behind Microsoft not releasing the available source code was because they use a third-party from EBSNet and do not have distribution rights.
Microsoft is opening discussion of how to improve their .NET Micro Framework for developers through their community, including Microsoft developers and external partners to make improvements on their open source development.