WP 7.1 SDK Release Candidate Now Available

You can now download the latest RC version of the WP SDK which lets you create apps for 7.0 and 7.5 (Mango). It also includes the ‘Go Live’ license that lets your publish your Mango apps to the Marketplace. Click here to get to the download page for the SDK as well as the Release Notes.

The Version Option is Invalid – Fix

Whilst most developers were enjoying the Mango SDK and device update, I kept running into a strange problem where app deployment always failed. The error message “The version option is invalid” was always being thrown so I could never test any projects (7.0 or 7.1). Unfortunately, I was also in the middle of updating and creating various apps for 7.0, so I didn’t have time to look in to the problem in any great detail. I tried uninstalling every version of VS2010 and Blend I had on my computer and installing the Mango Beta 1 and 2 from scratch. This didn’t make a difference as the error kept appearing. However, before starting a new project, I decided to take a deeper look into the problem and managed to fix it. So, for anyone who comes across this problem, this information might be helpful:

Developer? Get Mango on your Phone Now!

Title pretty much says it all, but you can now get new SDK for your phone. Full blog post here. Also, MS are starting to roll out Mango to registered developers. It may take a couple weeks for the distribution to be fully ready, but hopefully invites should be sent out soon.

Mango Tools Released And Conference Clips

Quick post in case you missed my Tweets. The Mango beta development tools are now available to download.  If you missed the conference, or want to watch clips from it again, you can do so in the Video Gallery.  You can also see some features in the video below:

[Code] Handling Backspace Key in WP7

I just came across a question on Stackoverflow asking how to handle the backspace key in a textbox. This isn’t something I’ve had to do, but my initial reaction would’ve been to handle it as with any other button. Simply, handle the textbox’s OnKeyDown event and then check the event argument to see if the relevant key has been pressed. For example, if we wanted to see if the ‘Enter’ key had been pressed whilst the textbox has focus, we could do this:

SDK Update, 1 million downloads and Phones for Developers

In preparation for the NoDo update, developers can now download the latest refresh of the SDK here (if the download doesn’t work, please try again later as the CDNs are still updating). This update will provide:

• Copy and Paste support for textboxes
• Updated emulator image that contains the copy and paste functionality (note: The functionality won’t be available on your actual device)
• Bug fixes and performance enhancements

Coding4Fun Windows Phone Toolkit for WP7 Devs

Clint Rutkas has released a new, open source WP7 toolkit on CodePlex. This is different from the Silverlight for Windows Phone 7  Toolkit and contains the following controls:

Creating Emulator Screenshots the VERY Easy Way!

Often, developers want to take screenshots of their emulator so that they can submit them to the marketplace. There are various ways of doing this such as print screen, dedicated WP7 emulator screenshot application etc.. My personal favourite, and arguably the easiest, is to use the Snipping Tool built into Windows 7. This isn’t anything new, and many people use this. However, it seems I was using it in an inefficient way (maybe I’m the only one :neutral:). Anywho, if you load the snipping tool (Start…type in ‘snip’ in the search box), the default value is Rectangular Snip, as shown below.

Windows Phone Marketplace payouts coming in January, reporting available now

A new blog post over on the Windows Phone Developer Blog has been written and explaining the current situation with AppHub, the marketplace and payouts. There have more than 18,000 registered developers and almost 4,000 apps released in to the Marketplace. Not bad figures considering the platform only got released recently. You can see a quick overview of the details below and a link to the main post.

Push Notification Limit – Here’s the Clarification

There have been tweets going around about a ‘new’ revelation that there can only be 15 Live tiles on the home screen and that apps have to be uninstalled to install another app that uses push notification. I say ‘new’ because it hasn’t  just been added to the rules, but it wasn’t something many people picked up on either. However, Jaime Rodriguez has written a good post clarifying the entire situation and I recommend reading it if you want more information on the push notification limit situation.

 

–@keyboardP