I have updated my Hands-On Lab “Building a Newsreader Application using Silverlight for Windows Phone 7” to work with the beta build of the Windows Phone 7 developer tools released in July.

You can download the newest bits from here:

• http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/F/D/7FD8FEF4-1F68-4B79-A8FE-D4162B587D32/WP7-HOL-JulyBETA.zip

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

• If you have installed a previous version of Windows Phone Developer Tools, you must uninstall it before installing the new version.
• You can install Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta even if you do not have Visual Studio already installed.
• Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta is compatible (and integrates with) only the English version of Visual Studio 2010 RTM, but does NOT require Visual Studio 2010 to be installed on the system prior.
• If you have Visual Studio 2010 Professional or a higher edition installed, you can continue to use it for Windows Phone development.
• The Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta installs a special version of Expression Blend 4 that does not conflict with other versions of Expression Blend, including version 4.

All software required to complete the lab is available as free preview- or trial-software:

• Windows Phone Developer Tools Beta (released in June 2010) (download link)

• 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.