As we have seen in Chapter 1, Microsoft has provided a rich set of tools for creating Windows Phone applications and this chapter will take us beyond simply laying out controls by adding animation. For many developers, animation is an afterthought, but it can be an important part of any application, especially a Windows Phone 7 application by conveying the status of the application and things like loading, waiting, and connection status. Because of the disconnected nature of a Windows Phone 7 application when building applications that connect to services on the Internet, these connections may be slower than usual where the user is located.

Also, as animations become a more important part of our applications, it is a necessity for both developers and designers to have an understanding of how animations work, specifically on the windows phone. In this chapter, we will work entirely in Expression Blend to create our animations. This is due to the fact that Visual Studio does not...