The pros and cons of developing apps for Windows Phone 7
Saturday, March 20, 2010 9:16Microsoft has given software developers a lot to think about with Windows Phone 7. And at the company’s yearly Mix conference this week, a lot of them were doing just that.
Mix focuses mainly on the Microsoft Web platform, but Microsoft used it this year to go into much more detail about creating software for its radically redesigned mobile operating system. Based on conversations, most of the attendees looking at Windows Phone 7 are impressed with the new visual “face” of the operating system.
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8 things you didn’t know about Windows Phone 7
Some will plunge at once into Windows Phone 7 development, leveraging the release of free Express editions of the core Microsoft development tools, all now enabled for Windows Phone. Others, in both Microsoft and non-Microsoft development shops, have a more complex set of decisions to make. The fact that they’re thinking about the decision at all is a victory for Microsoft’s mobile ambitions.
Not all of these are enterprise-based or enterprise-focused developers. But their assessments and questions often reflect the same concerns and requirements of those who are. Their questions are part of the unfolding exploration of just what Microsoft is delivering — and not delivering — in the first release of the mobile platform.
On Monday, Microsoft announced that free Express versions of the latest iterations of its core development toolkits, enabled for Windows Phone applications, are available for download.
Mix 10 attendees generally seemed impressed, even amazed, at what Microsoft achieved in the new UI layer for the mobile operating system.
“It’s very new, and very nice,” says Thomas Ribreau, project manager for AveComics, an online marketplace for digital comics. “Microsoft has created a new way of to think [about mobile applications]. That’s new to me, to see that in Microsoft.”
The company evaluated Windows Mobile 6.5. “It was not smooth enough for us,” Ribreau says. “The graphical functionalities were very very low.” But Windows Phone 7 is causing Ribreau to rethink. “I think we can do something with it.”
iPhone user Mark Tinderholt, a developer with Avanade, a systems integration joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft, is struck by the Windows Phone 7′s differentness from the iPhone UI. (Avanade has done some big Windows Mobile deployments with a range of big private companies and public sector clients.) One difference is Windows Phone’s use of animation, movement, color. “I had a visceral reaction to that,” he says. “I just didn’t like all the animation and movement. The iPhone is all column and row based. It’s just different.”
