You can now download my Hands-On Lab “Building a Newsreader Application using Silverlight for Windows Phone 7” from http://msdn.microsoft.com/de-ch/ee805901.aspx?id=106394

This self-paced Hands-On Lab will get you up to speed in developing applications for the new Windows Phone 7 platform using Microsoft Silverlight.

Guided by the lab manual, you will be creating a consumer application that aggregates news feeds and images, receives push-notifications for weather information and displays all in a panorama-style user interface as can be seen in the new Windows Phone 7 hubs.

You will be able to run and test your application in the Windows Phone 7 Emulator that is part of the SDK.

Prerequisites

Hardware Requirements

• A computer running one of the following operating systems, not running in a Virtual Machine due to compatibility issues with the Windows Phone 7 Emulator.
  • Windows Vista (x86 and x64) ENU with Service Pack 2 – all editions except Starter Edition.
  • Windows 7 (x86 and x64) ENU – all editions except Starter Edition.
• Installation requires 3 GB of free disk space on the system drive.
• 2 GB RAM or more.
• DirectX 10 capable graphics card with a WDDM 1.1 driver.

Software Requirements

All software required to complete the lab is available as free preview- or trial-software. Note that the links provided here may change over time.

• Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP - April Refresh (download link)

Please Note: The installation of the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP will fail if you have previously installed the latest update of Silverlight 4, which was published to Microsoft Update on Thursday June 3^rd 2010, versioned 4.0.50524.0

If you run into this error while trying to install the WPDT CTP Refresh, you can solve it by following these steps:

1. Go to the Programs and Feature control panel.
2. Locate the item named Microsoft Silverlight and uninstall it.
3. Re-run WPDT setup.

This issue will be addressed in a future release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools.

• Internet Information Server (download via Web Platform Installer)
  • Start the Web Platform Installer, Select Web Platform and under Web Server, click on “Click to include the recommended products”.
  • Then select the Customize link under Web Server and add ASP.NET.
  • Click Install.

Note: The released Version of Expression Blend 4 does not work with the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP - April Refresh. You need to uninstall Expression Blend 4 Release and install the Release Candidate, or skip the Expression Blend 4 parts in this manual using the specially marked Workarounds.
Furthermore, both Expression Blend Add-Ins mentioned below only work with Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate as well.

• Expression Blend 4 Release Candidate (download link)
• Microsoft Expression Blend Add-in Preview 2 for Windows Phone (download link)
• Microsoft Expression Blend Software Development Kit Preview 2 for Windows Phone (download link)