WPDevCon 2012 | The Windows Phone Developer Conference

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A Developer's Guide to Windows Phone App Marketing and Monetization

Releasing a great Windows Phone app or game is an important step, but
developers tend to focus all attention on ensuring top quality, richness and a great user experience. Unfortunately, most of the times, having a superb app is not enough to guarantee its success in the marketplace.

Developers have tried various methods to increase an app's popularity and income. Some have worked while others have not. There are a lot of nuggets of information about individual cases spread over the Internet and we try to collect them in this class. Learn techniques used by other app publishers to maximize exposure and revenue. We will study:

Monetization strategy selection based on the nature of the app, publisher's location and target markets.
When to go the ad-supported route vs. paid; how to price paid apps, and global accessibility of paid apps.
Tips and tricks to improve your app's chances at getting maximum exposure (both free and paid).

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Marketing

Accessing Real-Time Data Feeds to Deliver Real-Time Information at a Glance Has code image

Michael Lehman

Your users demand apps that deliver crucial, real-time information at a glance. Meanwhile, every day you wake up to a rising tide of new data feeds and APIs. Wouldn’t it be great if you had practical, real-world techniques that could simplify connecting to APIs, help process the data, and make it easy to provide simple, elegant user experiences?

Step by step, using an application shell and customizable code snippets, you’ll build WeatherWatcher, an app that uses the free WorldWeatherOnline.com API to display weather conditions for up to six locations in real time. Once you’ve built WeatherWatcher, we’ll explore how to customize and reuse the shell and snippets to turbocharge the way you build your apps that connect to and process your favorite data.

Bring your laptop with the Windows Phone Tools installed and power up your toolbox.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Adding Location Intelligence to Your Windows Phone Apps With Bing Maps Has code image

Nick Landry

This class will not teach you why we are on Earth, but it will teach you how to find out where we are on it. Find the user? Find the phone. Thanks to standard built-in Location Services and hybrid positioning hardware, every Windows Phone knows where it is.

Come study how to build a truly "smart" phone application by adding Location Intelligence Services (LIS). Using Visual Studio 2010, the Windows Phones SDK and Bing Maps SDK, you will learn how to locate the device in the world using the phone GPS, other Location Services, and display maps, and manipulate them with touch gestures, geocode addresses into lat/long pairs, perform proximity searches against various geospatial data stores and display the results on map, and more.

We’ll also study the various mapping technologies, SDKs and APIs in the Microsoft world, and explore how they apply within a distributed architecture that integrates Windows Phones. Location Intelligence is a natural extension of mobility and you cannot ignore it, so why would you ignore this class?

Prerequisites: Basics of Windows Phone Development, Visual Studio 2010, WP SDK 7.1, Intermediate C#, Calling REST Services from .NET.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Advanced Data Visualization in Windows Phone Applications Has code image

Nick Landry

Big data. Small phones. Such is the world we live in. In this class, you will learn how to implement rich data visualizations into your Windows Phone mobile applications. When building apps, the amount of space, or the form factor, to communicate to users is much smaller than a typical desktop application, so being able to effectively tell the story through larger amounts of data in charts, gauges, maps, timelines and other data visualization paradigms is more important than ever.

Through dynamic and insightful live data demos, you will see these techniques in action and discover all the tools available at your disposal to build rich data visualization dashboards in your own Windows Phone applications.

Prerequisites: Basics of Windows Phone Development, Visual Studio 2010, WP SDK 7.1, Intermediate C#, Database Access in .NET, Calling REST Services from .NET.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Advanced HTTP Programming Has code image

Jim McKeeth

The HTTP protocol is more ubiquitous than Kevin Bacon, but do you really understand how it works? This class dissects the HTTP protocol for practical gain with resuming downloads, downloading specific parts of files, dividing downloads over multiple servers and more - all from your Windows Phone application.

Bandwidth is precious and connectivity is spotty on mobile devices. By implementing resumeable downloads, you can be sure you download the entire file without the need to redownload part of it after the connection is dropped. Save your users’ bandwidth and make your application more responsive!

What if you only need a part of a huge file? Like one file out of the middle of a multi-gigabyte ZIP file? Learn how to extract just part of a file via the HTTP protocol and leave the rest on the server. Maybe a file is available from multiple file mirrors and you want to download it the quickest way possible. Your 4G LTE bandwidth may actually be faster than the throttle on the download server. By dividing your download across multiple servers and balancing it to favor the faster servers, you’ll be done downloading before you know it.

After attending this class, you will understand how the HTTP protocol makes all of this and more possible, and also take away code ready to use in your applications. This is an advanced class, and you should be comfortable with .NET and Windows Phone development.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Advanced Metro, Part I: Designing a Better Interface for Your WP7 App Has code image

Lincoln Anderson

An app is only as good as its user experience. In this class, we will review important Metro design principles as they pertain to Windows Phone 7 application design, and how your app can benefit from following them. Using real-world case studies, we'll study common design mistakes and recommend practical, beautiful solutions. Leveraging Metro guidelines and code snippets, we'll learn how to put these solutions into effect for a clearer, more usable, and more Metro Windows Phone 7 app.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Advanced Metro, Part II: Metro Design Clinic Has code image

Lincoln Anderson

In this class, we will build on the topics covered in "Advanced Metro, Part I: Designing." However, part of this class will be examining actual Metro apps built by the attendees’ organizations, and discussing their design issues.

Note: Attendees will be invited to submit apps in advance to be analyzed in this class.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Background Agents: Best Practices Has code image

Shawn Wildermuth

With Mango’s inclusion of background agents, you can now have code running when your app isn’t in the foreground, but it comes with some limitations. In this talk, you will see how to get the best out of using Background Agents, including Periodic Agents and Resource Intensive Agents.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Building Reusable Components for Windows 8, Silverlight 5, WPF and Windows Phone Has code image

Colin Melia

Enterprises have invested in Silverlight and WPF for rich desktop-based applications. With Silverlight supported through 2021, and the introduction of Windows 8 metro-style apps and the use of Silverlight on Windows Phone, there's value in architecting applications in such a way that you don't have to rebuild core components for each platform. Join this class for practical advice on how to use MVVM, the portable library and other strategies to build reusable components.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Building the Modern Mobile Enterprise with HTML5 and the Cloud

Chris Love

Bring Your Own Device, Consumerized IT, Mobile Device Management, Mobile Application Management and many other buzzwords are filling the world of modern enterprises today. They are all issues traditional Enterprise IT departments are struggling to answer, and traditional IT solutions for mobility seem to fall short of a true answer.

Fortunately, by leveraging HTML5, cloud-based technologies and a willingness to rethink current methodologies and techniques can give enterprises the advantage they need to make their line-of-business applications available to their employees in a cost-effective, secure way. In this class, we will examine various topics related to enterprise mobility and review examples that can solve common problems.

Level: Overview

Topic Area: WP Enterprise

BYOD: Your Data on an Employee's Device Has code image

Jim McKeeth

Thanks to the “Bring Your Own Device” trend, your users have a combination of Windows Phones, iPhones and Android phones, and you still need to give them access to share data. This session looks at different ways to share data between users across different devices, while keeping the data secure. The focus is on native apps and not browser-based solutions.

Leaving data access open to browsers and third party apps gives up control of your data. Providing native apps on the devices allows for continued control over the data even when you don’t control the device. Control the when, where, who and how of data access across multiple devices.

Learn how to track and restrict access, and handle when employees leave the company or lose devices. We'll also cover other issues and options for securing your data on an employee’s device.

Examples will emphasize the Windows Phone platform, but from the point of view of sharing that data on other devices. Attendees should have experience developing on the WP platform, and familiarity with databases.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Enterprise

Connecting the Dots Between Windows Azure and Windows Phone Has code image

Sam Basu

Windows Azure and Windows Phone are two rather happening platforms out of Redmond. Let's look at how Azure and Windows Phones can play well together, and in general, why cloud support is needed for most well-designed mobile solutions.

We'll dive deep into code and demos on how to get Push Notifications working from Azure. We'll also cover what OData is and why it is important with SQL Azure and cross-platform mobile applications, and end with the Azure Toolkits for WP7/iOS/Android, including how to set up Forms Authentication in Azure tables or use ACS. We'll look at overall cloud-based mobile solutions, as well as individual pieces. Oh yes, there will be plenty of real-world code. You should be able to walk away understanding how to leverage cloud resources in Windows Phone.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Creating a Game Lobby for Your Windows Phone 7 Game Has code image

Michael Cummings

In today’s game market, social games can gain popularity with extraordinary speed. For a mobile social game it’s important that the game provides mechanisms for players to interact with other players.

You will learn how to create a game lobby for your games. The lobby will allow the player to browse a list of other players waiting to play. The lobby will also provide private matchups through the use of invitations. Finally, you will see how to use notifications to let the players know that they have a matchup and the game is about to begin! To bring this all together, the lobby will be deployed to a Windows Azure account where games can then use the service, regardless of what platform the game is running on.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Creating Multi-Player, Turn-Based Games Using Windows Phone 7 Push Notifications Has code image

Michael Cummings

In today’s mobile market, social games can gain popularity with extraordinary speed. For a mobile social game, it’s important that the game provides immediate feedback to the user on progress within the game by other players. A large part of the social game is the ability to recruit other players to a cause and assist in achieving goals. These are just a few examples of how important having a communication channel that your game can leverage to allow players to interact really is.

All the current mobile platforms provide several ways to allow your games to communicate with other players. Come learn how to use the Push Notification Services to send and receive messages. You will see how to use push notifications to transfer play to the next player and synchronize play between multiple players.

Next, you will learn how to leverage push notifications to ask other players for assistance or to taunt about achievements made within the game. Finally, you will see how to modify your games' Live Tile based on information received from a Push Notification.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Creating SharePoint Windows Phone 7 Applications Has code image

Darrin Bishop

Organizations are increasingly extending SharePoint with custom mission-critical applications to solve business needs. This class will look at how you can start to extend your reach by creating SharePoint-based Windows Phone 7 applications. You will learn how to set up a SharePoint and Windows Phone 7 development environment, and authenticate SharePoint and integrate SharePoint data and services into Windows Phone 7 applications. We will finish with a look at using Push Notifications Services and SharePoint.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Enterprise

Customizing the Windows Phone Experience Has code image

Michael Samarin

One of the benefits of being a Windows Phone developer is Metro UI. Standardization of user interface always brings a lot of time saving when you can think about your application structure within pre-defined design language paradigms. However, sooner or later, we are facing challenges that are simply impossible to solve with standard platform components.

This class will help you identify such situations, and guiding with code examples through the following scenarios:

When your only option is to create totally custom components. You will get guidance on how to make reusable custom controls, what are the pros and cons of this decision, and what are those underwater stones you should be aware of.
Even when you think that your only option is to make custom controls, learn how effective a creative use of XAML, animation effects and Expression Blend can be.
Learn when using existing frameworks, such as Silverlight Toolkit and WP7Contrib, will save you a lot of time and when they will not.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Design for WP – It Doesn’t Have to Look and Feel Like a Programmer Designed It! Has code image

Chris Nicol

Even with Microsoft providing a design guide for developers, there are still a lot of apps that make it into the Marketplace that break many design principles. In this class, we will cover a number of important design principles that are not just about making your app look good, but are also about ensuring you provide the user with the best experience possible. We will also review tools like Visual Studio, Photoshop and Blend, and show some tips and tricks to help you design the best Metro apps possible.

Detailed topics include:

Metro Design
General Design Principles
Creating a Great User Experience
Telling a Story With Your App
Process for Success
Common Mistakes
Blend Tips and Tricks
XAML Styles – managing and architecture

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Developing Windows Phone Data Applications with MVVM, Parts I and II Has code image

Jose Luis Latorre

In this class, you will see how to properly develop a database-driven Windows Phone 8 application using some of the market's best practices and patterns, including MVVM, Repository and other very useful patterns that go especially well, all while using the most standard and widely used frameworks, like MVVM Light.

  The class will be mostly practical with a crystal-clear theoretical introduction to each pattern before developing it. We will go into each implementation one by one in a layered way, put in a solid root (pattern explanation) and explain the implementation step by step.

You will develop a Windows Phone 8 application that will generate the database, get data from it, and present it through different views, allowing the user to navigate properly. You will also learn how to interact with the different entities through the commanding pattern.

  At the end, you will clean up the navigation code in the code behind the views, implementing a navigation service. You will end up with a Windows Phone 8 application that will be coded in a completely pure MVVM style and developed with the most efficient patterns and practices

This is a two-part, 150-minute class.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Enterprise, WP Essentials

Five Points of Focus for Building a Memorable App Has code image

Kelly White

While the Windows Phone marketplace is much smaller than what is found on either an iPhone or Android device, developers are finding that discoverability is still a major problem. Developers are continuing to ask the universal question of how do we best surface our apps, and thereby increase their visibility and profitability?

The obvious answer is to get the marketplace team to highlight an app as a featured application. The next best answer is for everyone in your user base to recommend the app to their friends. Ultimately, the only way either of these can happen is if you build an application with a memorable and compelling user experience.

This class will highlight five key areas you should focus on to make your app memorable, pin-able, and something a user finds he or she cannot live without. We’ll look at how other applications have demonstrated these features, and we’ll walk through coding examples that illustrate the same.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Forget Code-Behind – Templates, Behaviors and More! Has code image

Chris Nicol

All too often, WP developers have to use code-behind to solve problems that they can’t accomplish in either their Views (XAML) or ViewModels. In this class, we look at a number of approaches that you can add to your repertoire as a WP developer. We’ll review the power of custom controls, behaviors, templates and more. We’ll also cover an exciting way to control storyboards and navigation from your ViewModels. List of Topics:

Custom Controls
Templates
Making the Most of Styles and Inheritance
Attached Properties vs. Attached Behaviors
Leveraging Attached Behaviors
VisualStateManager
Managing Navigation in a WP MVVM application
Managing Storyboards in a WP MVVM application

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

From a New Windows Phone Project to the Marketplace Has code image

Elad Shaham

The list of things you need to do in order to create a new Windows Phone project, implement its business logic, and upload it to the Marketplace, may sound intimidating. The truth of the matter is, it couldn't be easier. Develop, test, upload—that's all there is to it.

In this session, we will create a simple Windows Phone application, make sure it passes certification, and upload it to the Windows Phone marketplace. You don't have to be a super developer to create a Windows Phone app; in fact, some of the best Windows Phone apps are created by students. But developing a GOOD app takes a certain amount of effort.

We need to make our app stand out by creating a good user experience, which follows the UI guidelines, and make sure it works flawlessly. Luckily, the certification of all apps helps us in the process of creating better apps, since we need to take care of the small details. You will be shown how to leverage the SDK's built-in tools to make your app certification-ready.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Handling Tombstoning and Fast Application Switching Has code image

Matt Lacey

In many ways, tombstoning and fast application switching are an inconvenience. It would be great if we didn’t have to worry about them, but we do. They are a necessity of the platform’s design, and are there as part of the platform's attempts to provide a stable, reliable and predictable experience for the user. The way we handle tombstoning and fast app switching in our apps can greatly impact the user's experience and what the user thinks of our apps. As we want to create applications that the users will love, handling tombstoning and fast app switching is, well, essential.

This class will provide a complete guide to handling tombstoning and fast app switching within your apps. This will cover everything from the basics to details and examples of how to handle common controls, view models and a few advanced scenarios. We’ll also look at common mistakes, misunderstandings and gotchas. All this will leave you with a complete understanding of how to ensure your apps can correctly and simply handle tombstoning and fast app switching, enabling you to provide the best experience to the users of your apps.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Integrating SharePoint Social Features into Your Windows Phone 7 Applications Has code image

Darrin Bishop

Come learn how to create Windows Phone 7 applications that use the social capabilities SharePoint has to offer, including people search, user profile data, activity feeds, and colleagues. You will also learn how to provide push notifications in Windows Phone 7 applications that alert users when SharePoint list data or social data has changed. Finally, you will learn how to use external social websites like Twitter and Facebook to complement your social functionality and broaden the reach of your application to the world.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Enterprise

Learning How to Shape and Configure an OData Feed for High-Performing Windows Phone Applications Has code image

Chris Woodruff

You have all sat through simple WCF Data Service introductory classes multiple times, and they are valuable, but it is time to learn how to really leverage that WCF knowledge and learn how to build and produce valuable OData feeds that will allow your applications usability to sizzle. At the same time, you will learn how OData is built for high performance and security.

This class will teach and give deep knowledge into the configuration and extensibility of the WCF Data Service/OData feed. It will also teach how to secure your feeds through multiple user authentications such as OAuth, Windows and Forms Authentication.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Light Up Your App with Windows Azure Has code image

Josh Twist

Engaging Windows Phone applications do better, and really engaging apps need back-end services. This class will introduce you to Windows Azure and demonstrate how you can add connected experiences to your Windows Phone apps with back-end services built on Windows Azure.

After walking through the fundamentals, we’ll take a deep dive and demonstrate how you can use Windows Azure to leverage authentication, structured storage, geolocation, multimedia, data and push notifications to make your application really sing.

After attending the class, you will be empowered to take your applications to the next level with powerful and scalable back-end services.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Mastering Movement - The Art of Using Animation Has code image

Walt Ritscher

From the moment you turn on a Windows Phone device you are showered with animations. The home screen tiles wiggle and bounce. When you look at your people hub, you see elegant transitions as you move from screen to screen. But take a look in the marketplace at your competitors applications. Many of them are lackluster HTML clones of iPhone apps, static and dull.

You should consider adding some artful animation to your next application to make it a joyful, fun experience. If done right, animating parts of your UI can have a powerful influence on the user experience. We fortunately have a robust animation engine available in Silverlight, and this class shows you how to use it in interesting ways.

You'll start the class by examining animations, storyboards and keyframes. Once you are comfortable with these key topics, you'll learn the Expression Blend animation tools and then start exploring concepts like frame-based animation, creating custom animation types, and physics simulations.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Metro, Metro, Metro! Has code image

Sam Basu

Metro is a design language, and it is starting to be very important for Microsoft in terms of product differentiation. Starting in 2012, your Windows Phone, Windows 8 PC and Xbox all start looking very similar, but how? The power of Metro! You can always read up on Metro (fast and fluid, chromeless and content-first) but ever wonder what’s the magic behind the words? What makes Metro so simple, but easy to get wrong?

Come take a deep dive into the crux of Metro. Where is the origin, what is the meaning and the science behind the simplicity? Why is it important for you to understand design and the core building blocks of Metro? How can you know you are doing it right? We'll answer these questions and have other discussions and resources to get Metro right. You will walk away with a solid understanding of Metro and how to apply it in your next app.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Mobile Exception Monitoring and Analytics in Visual Studio 2012 Has code image

Sebastian Holst

Visual Studio and TFS 2012 includes an application analytics and incident monitoring solution. While the functionality works across all .NET frameworks, there is specific support for Windows Phone and Windows Azure that provides a unique view into the “whole mobile application,” not just the bits running locally on any given device. Further, the entire monitoring and reporting solution can be deployed inside an enterprise (or privately hosted) with no direct dependency on external marketplaces or services.

This class will walk through the components included inside Visual Studio and TFS 2012, and demonstrate the steps required to instrument distributed mobile applications and integrate the resulting application analytics into your development process.

You will:

Learn how to instrument Windows Phone applications to capture and report on exceptions in near real-time (in seconds, not minutes, hours or days).
Define basic rules inside TFS to intelligently automate the creation of TFS work items based upon production incidents.
Understand how to correlate exceptions across mobile and cloud platforms to better manage quality across applications with components running on multiple surfaces and runtimes.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Enterprise

Monetization - Past Results and New Strategies Has code image

Kelly White

Developing mobile applications just for the sake of "developing an app" can be fun and is very rewarding. However, finding spare time in your busy schedule to take on another hobby can be difficult, if not impossible. The most compelling thing about building applications for the Windows Phone is that your efforts can be monetized, thereby justifying further effort and time spent. Ultimately, you can find your efforts have led to the possibility of being an "indie" game/app developer as your full-time job. However, none of this is possible unless you can monetize your efforts.

In this class, we’ll study the different monetization strategies that are available in Windows Phone. We’ll explore ad-based revenue strategies and walk through a demo of how to build ads into your app. You’ll learn what you should do, what you shouldn’t do, and best practices.

You’ll also see the Trial API, run through some statistics, and see how to utilize it in your applications. We’ll talk about how In-App-Purchases (IAP) work on Windows Phone, how to set those up, and different strategies surrounding IAP.

Finally, the instructor will share the numbers and financials from his more popular Windows Phone games and applications. This class will also show trends, talk about lessons learned, and have a Q&A portion.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials, WP Marketing

Moving Your WP7 App to Windows 8 Metro Has code image

John Waters

Learn how to move your XAML-based Windows Phone application to the new Windows 8 Metro platform. In particular, we will examine the steps needed to go through to move the WPDevCon conference application, EventBoard, to a new Windows 8 Metro app. You will be able to compare the apps you have on your phone with what it looks like running on a Windows 8 tablet. The technical differences, similarities and tips and tricks for the process will also be discussed.   

We will explore the Metro version further and showcase some of the unique capabilities, such as semantic zoom and charms (search charms, settings charms and share charms), snapped view, notifications, and tiles. For anyone curious about how the current Windows Phone platform fits with Windows 8, this will be a class packed full of useful tips and code!

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Practical Windows Phone + Windows Azure Has code image

Colin Melia

Windows Phone application users are much more likely to keep engaging with an application if it makes use of updating Live Tiles. This is just one reason why you should consider a great cloud platform for working with your Windows Phone application. In this class, you will gain actionable insights into great features of both platforms and learn how to bring them together.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Prism, Caliburn Micro, MVVM Light – Best frameworks for Windows Phone Has code image

Elad Shaham

Mobile apps can sometimes be as simple as creating a home page, throwing in an app bar and adding a nice background. As the app we're creating gets more complicated, we begin to examine frameworks that will not only create some order in our code, but also make our code much more maintainable.

In this session, we will introduce the more significant client-side frameworks for Windows Phone, and discuss the pros and cons of using each one of them. At first we will focus on Prism, perhaps the most important UI framework in the XAML world. We will show how Prism, a framework created by Microsoft's Patterns and Practices team, is fully supported under Windows Phone. Later, we will show the very mature Caliburn Micro framework vs. the light but reliable MVVM Light solution. We'll sum up by comparing all three frameworks, side by side, so you'll know which one to pick for your needs.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Share Code to Target Multiple Platforms with Portable Class Libraries Has code image

Daniel Plaisted

Are you like so many developers today writing apps for multiple platforms such as Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Xbox 360? Come to this class to learn how to use .NET Portable Class Libraries to make this easier by creating assemblies that can be shared across multiple platforms, including Metro style apps, Windows Phone, Silverlight, Xbox 360, and of course, the .NET Framework using Visual Studio 2012.

We will look at real-world examples of apps and the common patterns they use to re-use code on multiple platforms with portable libraries. We will see how the Model-View-ViewModel pattern (MVVM) is ideally suited to sharing code between platforms since it encourages a clean separation between the app logic, which can be shared, and the UI, which is platform-specific.

Don't be left behind maintaining five different projects with similar code! Increase your productivity by learning how to use portable libraries. To maximize your benefit from this session, having some prior experience with the MVVM pattern is recommended.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Social Games on Windows Phone 7 and the Web Using Microsoft Azure Has code image

Michael Cummings

In today’s mobile market, social games can gain popularity with extraordinary speed. For a mobile social game, it’s important that the game provides mechanisms for players to interact with other players. Some social games, like many on Facebook, allow players to recruit other players to their cause and assist them in achieving your goals. Other games have more real-time interaction with players. A consistent theme for social games is the more players can play the game, the better, so being able to target multiple platforms with a minimal amount of rework is extremely important.

This class will walk you through creating a simple social game. The basic framework will rely heavily on a website deployed onto Microsoft’s Azure Platform, using ASP.NET MVC, HTML5 and CSS3. By using the Social Games for Azure Toolkit, additional game mechanics like authentication, leaderboards, friends, invites and notifications will be added. You will learn how to adapt your games to mobile devices so that players can participate in the game no matter where they are.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Testing Windows Phone Applications Has code image

Lino Tadros

Windows Phone 7 and 8 applications are the new kids on the block, and not surprisingly, tools for testing these applications are in their infancy. This class will give you ideas on how to perform functional and unit tests on the Windows Phone 7 and 8 platforms. Explore the NuGet packages that are available to you to enable functional testing of Windows Phone apps, as well as other testing frameworks and tools that are suitable for WP7 and WP8 testing. We'll show you how to get started testing and to deal with the common gotchas.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Enterprise

The Joy of Push Has code image

Sean McKibben

Learn the power of push! The class begins by reviewing trends in the mobile app explosion. Through examples and hard data, you will see why push notifications are an ideal way to engage mobile users. You will then play with LiveTiles in a variety of ways to understand the ways to power push on Windows Phones. This portion of the class includes reviewing a variety of LiveTile solutions, exploring what the tiles are, what they do and what limitations exist when using them. After a dive into concepts and intricacies specific to the MPNS push notification mechanisms, the class concludes with a review of the unusual potential of what can be conveyed through a simple live tile.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

The Top 10 Ways to Market and Generate Revenue for Your Windows Phone App

Chris Woodruff

This class will present tips and teach some lessons learned from the instructor's first year as a Windows Phone 7 app developer. Achieving consumer awareness and achieving longer sales durations for your Windows Phone app requires a lot of organization and some strategic planning. This class will show you how to incorporate marketing and business savvy into your design and development process, giving your app the best possible chance of succeeding in the Windows Phone Marketplace. In this class, you will learn how to:

Analyze your target audience
Research your competitors
Select the best icon and title for your application
Build a great app
And much more!

Level: Overview

Topic Area: WP Marketing

Top 10 Mistakes Windows Phone Developers Make Has code image

Shawn Wildermuth

When building an application for the Windows Phone, there is much to consider to make your application successful. In this class, the instructor, author of “Essential Windows Phone 7.5: Application Development with Silverlight,” will walk you through the top 10 problems seen in Windows Phone applications.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Using Async and Await on Windows Phone Has code image

Matt Lacey

Having great perceived performance is crucial to producing a good app. One of the ways we have of improving the perception of performance and providing a responsive user interface is to perform tasks asynchronously.  This is nothing new. As mobile developers, we know and have come to accept this. We implement continuations and pass around “callback” methods and functions. This works and you can do it this way.

But there is a better way.

The “async” and “await” keywords (coming in the next versions of C# and VB.Net, but are currently available as part of the Async CTP) provide an easier way to write asynchronous code.  It means we’re able to implement the same functionality with much less code and code that is easier to read and debug. If you’ve ever tried to debug a series of nested callbacks, you’ll be in awe of the way this becomes so much easier. Even if you haven’t yet had to battle the complexities of complicated asynchronous code, you’ll appreciate the simplicity and elegance of what’s now possible.

Starting with the assumption that you know nothing about this new functionality, you will get you up to speed quickly and learn lots of tips, suggestions and guidance to how to use the more advanced features.
This code-heavy class will leave you wanting to rush back to your existing codebases, delete loads of them and replace them with a much smaller amount that includes those magic new keywords.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Using Full Potentials of Windows Phone Camera and Imaging APIs Has code image

Michael Samarin

In this class, we will build a complete camera application illustrating the usage of as many Camera APIs as possible. Since the Windows Phone Mango release, third-party developers have the opportunity to create advanced imaging apps, incorporating a device's camera capabilities. Now it is possible to not only take and store pictures, but it's also possible to control parameters of image and video recording, make unique camera controls specific to your application, and implement complex, real-time image processing of live camera streams.

There are many common camera tasks, which you may have to take care of, and we will discuss and illustrate different strategies for your consideration:

Querying and understanding capabilities of camera module available on device
Integrating viewfinder capabilities, building custom camera controls
Real-time processing and analyzing of raw camera stream
Understanding performance optimization on Windows Phone when building image filters
Different ways of storing media data and App Connect utilization

This is a hands-on class, and you should bring your own Windows Phone device and laptop with an installed development environment. We are going to use Nokia Lumia devices during this class for demonstrations.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Using the Microsoft Push Notifications Service in Your Windows Phone Apps and Games Has code image

Chris G. Williams

If you aren't using notifications in your apps and games, why not? You can bet your competition is. This class introduces the Microsoft Push Notifications Service and explains how it works and how to interact with it to create Tile, Toast and Raw (in-app) updates. Sample code will be provided for all demos.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Utilizing Sensors from Windows Phone to Metro Apps Has code image

James Steele

Sensors are an important part of a mobile platform. Attend this class to see the progression of the Windows API from G-sensor to Win8. Code examples will show how to utilize this common API. In addition, effective use of sensor data will be discussed, as well as methods to optimize performance and provide a more relevant result.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

What’s new for .NET Developers in Windows Phone 8 Has code image

Subramanian Ramaswamy

It's an exciting time to be a Windows Phone 8 app developer since you might have heard about some pretty big changes to the platform. Get a behind the scenes look at .NET on Windows Phone 8 and see what's changed from Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) and how your apps benefit.

You’ll learn about better diagnostics, multi-core support, WinRT, performance improvements, sharing code between Metro and Phone and more. Also learn about the cool new features as we show how to port your existing apps to Windows Phone 8, and teach you how to minimize your porting costs.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Windows Phone + SignalR = Awesome Possibilities! Has code image

Sam Basu

Built from the ground up, Windows Phone brings together what you care about most, and brings it to you in an innovative and simple Metro UI interface. You and your content are at the center of it all through the Start screen experience with Live Tiles and integrated Hubs, which provide rich and continuous user experience. SignalR, on the other hand, is a very cool piece of technology that provides the async signaling library to build real-time, multi-user interactive applications that connect disparate systems.

What do you get when we combine the personalization of Windows Phone and the adaptability of SignalR? We get instant, real-time communication between phone and back-end server. We get location service applications. Chat. Stocks. Alerts. Endless possibilities! Come join this class to explore some of these new opportunities through demos and code samples.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Windows Phone App Localization for a One-World Marketplace Has code image

Brendan Clavin

Localization is an essential app development process in order to reach as large of a market as possible in a one-world market. If mobile devices can reach people worldwide, your apps should, too. High-quality localization should not be the privilege of large corporations, but should be within the affordable reach of everyone no matter what the scale of their operation.

This class will show you where the opportunities exist to increase sales through localization, and how to determine if an app is suitable for a target market. It will demonstrate the potential increase in sales and download over and above their current English-only markets. Finally, you will learn about the localization process and the expected return on investment relative to the cost of localizing an app.

The technical portion of the class will dive into the mechanics of preparing an app for localization. We’ll take a sample app and externalize all the localizable content for translation. All localizable content will be organized appropriately within the project. A demonstration of pseudo-localization will be given. Pseudo-localization is a process that helps app developers test the localizability of the app before engaging with translators. An overview of how to properly handle date and time formats in the app will also be discussed. A demonstration of switching locales on a phone and how the user interface of the device (and the app) will change to the appropriate language will also be demonstrated.

This class will demystify the entire localization process, giving you a deep understanding of what it takes to get your apps into the hands of the non-English speaking consumers of the world, and how to increase sales and downloads in the process.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials, WP Marketing

Windows Phone for the Micro-ISV Has code image

Kelly White

A Micro-ISV is an independent software vendor with fewer than 10 or even just one software developer. While the term has come to mean more than just a "one-man shop," any ISV with more than 10 employees is generally not considered a Micro-ISV. So that begs the question: Are you a Micro-ISV?

This class will cover what Windows Phone can do for you as a Micro-ISV. The instructor will use real-world experience of using Windows Phone as a consumer while developing Windows Phone applications for clients. If you do not personally use Windows Phone in an enterprise environment, you still need to be ready to show clients how they can take advantage of and use it in theirs. We will walk through a scenario using the new “company hub,” where we will build a set of applications for a potential client.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Enterprise

Windows Phone XNA Graphics and Sensor Integration Has code image

Bary Nusz

This advanced class will teach the details of how to generate XNA graphics and to integrate those graphics with the phone's sensors. We'll start with the basics of generating a simple XNA graphic and work our way up to complex objects with numerous examples. We'll then go over initializing the compass, accelerometer and camera sensors, and utilizing their data. This will include sensor limitations and orientation details.

Finally, we'll cover how to integrate the graphics and sensor data into a seamless application that can be the basis for any alternative-reality application. You will need experience with .NET and C#. Some 3D graphics knowledge, such as OpenGL, DirectX or XNA, would be recommended. This class will cover C# and 3D matrix manipulation. All of the example applications and slides will be made available beforehand so you can follow along during the class.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

Working with Audio on Windows Phone Has code image

Michael Samarin

There are several common scenarios and use cases when you are dealing with audio on Windows Phone. This class will guide you with code samples through such cases as:

Generating custom sounds on Windows Phone
Recording audio
Working with background audio agents, streaming and playing music in the background
Understanding ringtones
Working with media library, accessing music metadata, playlist-based media

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

XAML User Interfaces for Your Windows Phone 7 XNA Games Has code image

Michael Cummings

In today’s game market, social games can gain popularity with extraordinary speed. Every game today has a need for some user interface, whether it’s just a simple menu to get you into the game quickly, or an in-game HUD-type display. Many times, the UI is developed specifically to handle a game's needs by rewriting a lot of foundational framework type code.

For games developed using Windows Phone XNA for Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango), there are now two viable options for creating UIs without having to rewrite a lot of UI Framework code. Microsoft has provided an XAML control to display an XNA game on a page, and an XNA renderer for XAML, allowing you to display XAML controls as a HUD-type display.

The class will cover both methods of leveraging XAML for your UI, using a concrete game as an example. The first part of the class will cover using an XAML UI with the XAML Game Page to display your XNA game. Common mistakes and pitfalls will be discussed, as well as solutions and workarounds.

The second half of the class will cover creating in-game controls using XAML. You will learn how to initialize the renderer and render XAML controls over the XNA game. Limitations in this method will be discussed with ways to help prevent you from making common mistakes.

Level: Advanced

Topic Area: WP Essentials

XNA Part I: Building a Scrolling Tile Engine with XNA Has code image

Chris G. Williams

This Windows Phone class shows basic techniques for creating games with XNA that use a scrolling tiled map. Displaying sprites (2D graphics) is also covered. This is part one of a two-part series, and sets the foundation for "Part II: Building a Pathfinding System Using Waypoints with XNA."

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials

XNA Part II: Building a Pathfinding System Using Waypoints with XNA Has code image

Chris G. Williams

This Windows Phone class builds on "XNA Part I: Building a Scrolling Tile Engine with XNA." Attend and learn a degree of artificial intelligence for the creatures in your game by creating a system of waypoints they can use to navigate the terrain on your map.

Level: Intermediate

Topic Area: WP Essentials