Chapter 2. Free Transport with Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend 4
WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER
Where to get all the tools you need to start building amazing Windows Phone applications and games
How to get started with Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone
Working with Expression Blend 4 to Design Windows Phone applications
Running applications in the Windows Phone Emulator
Developing for previous versions of Windows Mobile could be somewhat traumatic because there were many different technologies, frameworks, and tools that could be used, none of which made building rich user experiences easy. Windows Phone, however, supports just two development strategies: Silverlight, primarily for application development; and XNA, for games development. Silverlight is an event-driven system in which the layout is declaratively defined using XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language), which can include styles, templates, states, and animation. XNA, on the other hand, is a game-loop-driven framework, specifically geared toward rendering two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) graphics.
In contrast to other mobile platforms, where the development tools are free, Windows Mobile has traditionally required at least Visual Studio Standard Edition. But Microsoft has announced that the development tools for Windows Phone will be free, in the form of Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone. This includes a device emulator that includes the Windows Phone operating system compiled for the x86 ...
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