Professional Windows® Phone 7 Application Development: Building Applications and Games Using Visual Studio, Silverlight®, and XNA®

Chapter 20. Where to Next?

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER

• Getting your device set up for development and testing

• Migrating existing applications to Windows Phone

• How to monitor and improve performance

• Preparing your application to be published

In this final chapter, you will learn a few tips and tricks about building applications for Windows Phone. This includes how to add a splash screen to your application and an overview of some of the user interface (UI) toolkits that are available to help you build richer user experiences.

DEVICE DEBUGGING

Throughout this book, you have mostly focused on working with the Windows Phone emulator that ships with the Windows Phone development tools. However, it is important that at a minimum you perform a final set of tests, including some usability testing, on a real device. Unlike previous editions of Windows Mobile, this is not as simple as copying your application onto the device. With Windows Phone the only way to distribute an application to an end user is via the Windows Phone Marketplace. For development and testing purposes, there is an alternative that involves registering a real device for use in development. This will allow you to associate up to five devices with your Windows Live ID account.

Registering for Development

In order to deploy an application to a Windows Phone device without publishing it to the Windows Phone Marketplace, you need to register the device. The steps for registering a device for use in development and testing are relatively ...