The processing and certification of the initial batch of applications into the Windows Phone Marketplace has been underway for the last few days. Certain best practices and common issues have been uncovered that is worth sharing with other developers who are preparing their applications for submission into the marketplace:

  1. Understand the application policies that represent the requirements all applications need to meet in order to pass certification testing. The Windows Phone 7 application certification requirements are posted at http://developer.windowsphone.com.   We’ve documented all the policies and requirements is detail - taking the 30 minutes to read this will save you a lot of time.
  2. Know your iconography.
    • Test Case 4.6 - Screen shots should encompass the full 480  x 800 dimension, must be a direct capture of the phone screen or emulator and needs to represent the correct aspect ratio.
    • Test Case 4.5 – Avoid using the default Windows Mobile icons

      Including a panorama background image is optional, but recommended. This will enable Microsoft to potentially feature your panorama image on the Marketplace catalog to help improve your application’s visibility with the likely result of more downloads.
  3. Support Information – Test Case 5.6.
    • Until 10/31/2010, it is recommended that applications include the version number or support information (for example a URL or email), which is easily discoverable by end-users.
    • Modify your applications now to help plan for 11/1/2010 when this test case will be enforced.
  4. Toast Notification – Test Case 6.2
    • There must be the ability for the user to disable toast notification.
    • On first use of HttpNotificationChannel.BindtoShellToast method, the application must ask the user for explicit permission to receive a toast notification.
  5. Applications Running Under a Locked Screen – Test Case 6.3
    • This only applies to applications that continue to execute when running under the locked screen and does not apply to applications in a suspended state.
    • Prompt the user for explicit permission to run under a locked screen upon first use of ApplicationIdleDetectionMode.
  6. Back Button – Test Case 5.2.4
    • Back button behavior is one of the most typical failures.
    • A common failure is pressing the back button during application runtime exits the application, instead of returning the application to a previous page or closing the presented menu or dialog.
  7. Themes – Test Case 5.1.1. Avoid controls and text washing-out by testing applications with the Theme Background set to “light”.
  8. Languages.  Be sure that the application description and the text the application displays to end users is localized appropriately in the target language.
  9. Failures upon Upload to the Marketplace.  There is a validation tool that assesses your application upon upload to the Marketplace. Some common failures are:
    • Error 1029 – Your XAP in missing an interop manifest. Make sure the interop syntax is specified in the manifest file. If the account does not have permissions to run interop, this error message will also be generated.
  10. Windows Phone Developer Tools. Be sure to use the RTM version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools as applications built on previous tool versions will fail testing.