Book Image

Windows Phone 7.5 Application Development with F#

By : Lohith G N
Book Image

Windows Phone 7.5 Application Development with F#

By: Lohith G N

Overview of this book

Windows Phone is an OS which is also a platform in itself and provides an opportunity for application developers to build their apps and sell them on the Windows Phone Marketplace. Windows Phone is slowly catching up in the race with iOS and Android. Although well suited for scientific and mathematical calculations, the Windows Phone Platform provides an opportunity to program in F#. "Windows Phone 7.5 Application Development with F#"  focuses on making the user aware of Windows Phone App Development with the F# programming language in as short a time as possible. The book teaches you about the development environment, helps you understand the project structure, understand the controls, and ends with some of the cool features of the platform like sensors, launchers, and choosers. The book starts off with enabling the user with the right tools required to start developing. It focuses on getting the IDE ready, and project and item templates. By the end of the book the user will be familiarized with the different aspects of the platform itself. The transition from one chapter to another is short and focused so that you can get to the meat of the topic quickly.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Windows Phone 7.5 Application Development with F#
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
4
Windows Phone Screen Orientations
5
Windows Phone Gesture Events
7
Windows Phone and Data Access
Index

Prerequisites for development


To start developing for Windows Phone using F# as a language, you will need some prerequisites to be installed on your development system. The prerequisites are as follows:

  • Visual Studio 2010

  • Windows Phone Software Development Kit 7.1

  • Windows Phone Project and Item Templates for F#

So let's take a look at these one by one.

Visual Studio 2010

When you install Visual Studio 2010 (Professional or Ultimate) and choose the default options during installation, the installer will, by default, install Visual C#, Visual C++, Visual Basic, and Visual F#. This is by far the easiest way of starting to develop with F#.

Windows Phone Software Development Kit 7.1

The Software Development Kit (SDK) provides us with the tools needed to develop applications and games for the Windows Phone platform. The SDK can be downloaded from http://gnl.me/WPSDK71. The SDK installs the following components on your development system:

  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone

  • Windows Phone Emulator

  • Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Assemblies

  • Silverlight 4 SDK and DRT

  • Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Extensions for XNA Game Studio 4.0

  • Microsoft Expression Blend SDK for Windows Phone 7

  • Microsoft Expression Blend SDK for Windows Phone OS 7.1

  • WCF Data Services Client for Window Phone

  • Microsoft Advertising SDK for Windows Phone

Windows Phone project and Item Templates for F#

The easiest way to get up and running is to utilize one of the project templates available through the Visual Studio Gallery. These templates have been created by the F# community and they provide a great way to kick-start your project. Daniel Mohl, an F# Most Valuable Professional (MVP) has written a couple of Visual Studio templates that will help us to quickly get up and running with Windows Phone development using F#. You can download any of the following available templates based on your needs. The templates and URL from where you can download them is as follows: