We recently released an update to the Windows Phone SDK that provides extra tools and features for developing for 256-MB devices. Most importantly, this tools update contains a new 256-MB emulator to test your applications. Keep in mind however, that...

It was recently brought to my attention that we have done a poor job of evangelizing the Windows Phone Design Guidelines on MSDN . These guidelines were previously available in PDF format, but a few months ago a couple of folks worked really hard to bring...

We recently made a refresh of the Windows Phone documentation and samples. We've updated several samples: Background Agent Background Transfer Service Quick Card Search Extensibility We also added the following new sample that shows...

Silverlight 5 supports multiple playback rates. When the playback rate is set to a rate that does not support audio playback, audio will be muted. If playback is reset back to 1 or to any value that supports audio playback after multiple rates that don’t...

If you are a Windows Phone developer, there are some properties offered on the Binding object in SIlverlight 4, which is supported by Mango. Thse properties were not offered in Silverlight 3/Windows Phone OS 7.0. The SL4 binding properties make setting...

Silverlight 5 has released! Here's the link to download the Silverlight 5 tools . Silverlight 5 offers many new features including: PivotViewer control Trusted applications in-browser 3D graphics Vector printing Improved text rendering...

If you’ve tried unsuccessfully to use the HyperlinkButton control or the Hyperlink type in your Silverlight for Windows Phone applications, I have a tip for you. In Silverlight for Windows Phone you must always set the TargetName property to a value for...

The Windows Phone Mango updates are going out to handsets, and the RTM version of the Mango SDK is now available. In addition, the Marketplace is now available on the web. Check it out here . You can get the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK from the download...

One of the new features in Silverlight 5 RC is the ability to call native code including Win32 APIs through platform invocation, or pInvoke. The technology itself is pretty well-known and it’s been in .NET since version 1.0. Here is one of the tutorials...

Application restricted media (ARM) is new feature in Silverlight 5 RC that enables content providers to ensure their content under digital rights management (DRM) is consumed only by Silverlight applications they authorize. This enables experience...

The SL5 RC has released and you can now download the tools here . This is an exciting release and brings many new features to Silverlight. Following are just a few of the new features. You can check out more details in the What's New for Silverlight...

Windows Phone SDK 7.1 RC is now available. You can use this version of the tools to create Windows Phone Mango apps and submit them to the marketplace. You need to uninstall previous versions of the tools before installing this version. These tools...

Not only does Mango support Silverlight 4, there are also numerous updates and improvements to Silverlight for Windows Phone. A bunch of work has gone into compatibility between Mango and Windows Phone 7, however you should test your existing applications...

The Mango Windows Phone Developer Tools Windows Phone SDK Beta2 released today (the tools have been renamed to SDK). With the beta2 release you will see some additions to the tools like the Isolated Storage Explorer , improvements to the profiler and...

I'm happy to report that the Fuel Tracker sample is now available in Visual Basic as well as C#. Additionally, we have fixed several small issues that various people have reported, one of which prevented the application from working correctly when running...

Windows Phone 7 includes Panorama and Pivot controls that you can use to display controls and data and navigate through them using their built-in swipe and pan gestures. To help you understand these controls we have added a new quickstart to our...

The Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta released today. Download them here . The tools enable you to get started developing applications for the next version of Windows Phone 7 Codenamed "Mango" and leverage new phone features while continuing to...

Silverlight 5 Beta introduces a new ICustomTypeProvider interface that enables data binding to objects the structure of which cannot be known until runtime. This is a common problem when you work with data in any format from databases to metadata or XML...

The Silverlight 4 documentation has been updated--both online MSDN docs and the offline CHM. The CHM is Silverlight only and is great for fast, offline access. Online Silverlight 4 MSDN Docs Offline Silverlight 4 MSDN Documentation There...

So I started work on a sample today and decided I wanted to use a Pivot control. I created a new project in Visual Studio and looked for the Pivot control in the Toolbox, but didn’t find it. In the XAML editor I tried typing <phone:…and got Intellisense...

We’ve got apps , and we’ve got chms. Well, more specifically, a chm for Silverlight 5 beta. To start, you can check out what’s new for Silverlight 5 beta . In addition to the new 3D support, there are many great additions to Silverlight...

Happy Silverlight 5 Beta day! The biggest additions to Silverlight 5 are certainly the support for GPU accelerated video and 3D graphics and the SDK team has been hard at work trying to get samples and documentation together for today. If you're a developer...

There are currently no breaking changes for Silverlight 5 Beta to report. See also Silverlight Versions and Version Compatibility .

If you’re planning on attending MIX 2011 conference in Las Vegas and if you own a Windows Phone, check out our new Conference Helper app for Windows Phone 7, that we just released to the marketplace. Conference Helper is a free app. You can get...

The Microsoft game folks just released a tutorial that will guide you through the creation of a two-dimensional action game – called Shooter – on Windows, Xbox 360, or Windows Phone 7.