First things first. Thank you so much for reaching out to the Windows Phone team to signal your interest in bringing your talents to our platform. To be honest, we didn’t expect this level of response, so we were caught a bit flatfooted. It took a few days (on the weekend) to pull all the mails together into one place to allow me to respond in a smart way and not retype every mail by hand. Consider this a first step in building a relationship with the Windows Phone team. We are psyched to have you aboard and to see what your imagination can do on the Windows Phone canvas.
Getting Started With Windows Phone
First things first. Thank you so much for reaching out to the Windows Phone team to signal your interest in bringing your talents to our platform. To be honest, we didn’t expect this level of response, so we were caught a bit flatfooted. To avoid retyping the same mail over and over again, we spent the extra time to load the mails into our CRM system so we could ensure we were following up with each of you.
Here are some of the common questions we have received: Where do you get the tools? What is the App Hub? How do you submit apps? Where can I get a phone?
We pulled together a set of links to get you going on your path. You will find that content in a table at the bottom of the mail. It should get you well on your way, and we have a great community of MVP support, which can be found on the App Hub forums, or on Twitter (#wpdev is the hashtag).
Insofar as training, we have arranged to have a 2 day, live, streamed training event about how to build apps for Windows Phone. It is coming up this week.
Registration:
It’s important to note that while this will be delivered live and streamed, but that we will also be posting the recorded version of the videos online shortly after the completion of the training event.
Students
If you are a student developer, your best first stop is to contact Ben Lower on our team. He is spearheading the academic efforts for Windows Phone. His email is PhoneNinja@microsoft.com and his twitter is @BenLower.
Mobile Champs
Our mobile champs are our developer evangelists in your area. They are empowered to do whatever it takes to make you successful. They will have invites to in person Windows Phone training events, access to coding resources, will be able to introduce you to our marketing programs once your apps are in Marketplace, and they have phones and tokens for App Hub accounts (if cost of an account is a hardship). Here’s the list of champs
Phones
We have phones for developers committed to building apps and games for Windows Phone. This isn’t a free ride program where we just hand out phones to people because they say they want one. When you connect with your local champ, you are building a relationship that will hopefully last a long time.
We have current retail phones, and in the coming weeks/months, we will have updated Mango retail hardware phones. We also have prototype Mango devices (which have the gyros not available on current retail devices), so if you are building an app which requires Mango hardware, you can make an ask of those as well.
Online Resources
| Topic |
What is it? |
Link |
| App Hub |
The central repository for all things Windows Phone for developers. This is where you will go to create an account, get the tools, submit and manage your apps, participate in forums, etc. |
|
| Getting Started |
Your first stop to get going on dev |
|
| Downloads |
The dev tools – FREE – are here |
|
| Registration |
Some people need a little extra help, and this walkthrough of the developer registration should be useful |
|
| Submissions |
A little extra help on the submission process. |
|
| Certification Requirements |
OK, your app is done, but will it pass cert? We aim to give you plenty of visibility into the process and be very transparent on why your apps failed, but please read through this. |
|
| Jump Start |
A video series sponsored by Channel9, our developer focused online video destination portal. |
|
| Design Day |
Every developer could probably use a little extra help with their app design. Here are some great tutorials all about the Metro UI design language for Windows Phone. |
|
| Absolute Beginners |
There’s always the possibility that you are big on ideas, but maybe not so much on dev skills. That’s OK. We have a great course which will get you up to speed even if you are an absolute beginner. |
|
| Mango Hands On Labs |
If you want to dig a little deeper, but prefer the lab walkthrough format, we have some great labs here for you. |
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