Live Lessons Videos for Windows Phone 7

Yesterday I just received the final signed contracts for creating 6-8 hours of Windows Phone 7 development videos for the Live Lessons series from SAMS/Pearson Technology.

The following are the tentative topics to be included in the video.  Note – these need to be reconciled with the public beta released yesterday 7/12/2010.

1.    Introduction to Windows Phone 7 Development (Downloads, Emulators and Tools)
Perform an overview of what tools are to be used to build applications, what SDK’s need to be installed and where they can be downloaded

2.    Hello WP7S - Silverlight Edition
Start from the Project Wizard and clearly demonstrate all the steps necessary to create and run a simple Silverlight Windows Phone 7 application on the emulator.

3.    Hello WP7S - XNA Edition
Start from the Project Wizard and clearly demonstrate all the steps necessary to create and run a simple XNA Windows Phone 7 application on the emulator.

4.    Contrast differences between Silverlight and XNA
With a solution including both an XNA and a Silverlight application, compare and contrast how each application performs the basic functionality required for a Windows Phone application.

5.    Debugging and profiling
This will probably be more of a reference topic that will show the learner how to attach and use the debugger and profiler.  The focus will be on things that are different when debugging a device rather than a Windows for Web application.

6.    Add Location Support
Add functionality to use AGPS, WiFi and GPS within an application.  This topic will not only cover any differences within the API’s but will also discuss the differences as far as speed to acquire location, accuracy and power consumption.

7.    Add Accelerometer Support
Add functionality to support accelerometer into our sample application.

8.    Add Gesture Support
Add functionality to support gestures into our sample application.

9.    Custom Notifications strategies and support
Discuss and implement HttpChannel notifications that our application will subscribe to, for being notified of external events.

10.    Playing Sounds
How to load and play sounds in a Silverlight and XNA application

11.    Storing Data
How to store data in isolated storage, unless a clear relational database story is introduced in the first WP7S release, this will primarily focus on serialization of POCO (Plain Old CLR Objects) and file objects.

12.    Make your application look like it belongs on a WP7S (Metro UI Design Guidelines)
Use Expression Blend and XAML Resources to implement the Metro UI design guidelines

13.    What happens when your app goes into the background
Implement logic to handle the application going into the background as well as startup if the application was terminated while it’s in the background.  Also discuss considerations for your application to be a good citizen so it does not get terminated if it does go into the background.

13.    Using built-in background Services
Although there is no guarantee that your application will not be terminated when it goes in the background, Windows Phone 7 provides you with certain services that you can access if it does go into the background or is terminated.  This topic will discuss these services.

14.    Integrating with Web Services (oData, SOAP, WCF)
Demonstrate how to bring data from different types of web services into our application.

15.    Building your first Live Tile *
Create a Live Tile that is updated by a notification that can be used to launch your application.

16.    Integrating with a Hub (people and/or picture) *
Build a feature that will extend the data used/provided by our application into a built in Windows Phone 7 Hub

17.    What happens when a phone call comes in?
This may be more of a demo or reference topic, but we will discuss what happens to your application and how you can gracefully handle an incoming phone call.

18.    Adding simple Animations, Behaviors, Physics and Collisions.
For both Silverlight and XNA the approach for animations is different.  Show how to Move, Scale and Rotate simple sprites.  For Silverlight how to use behaviors and for XNA add a reference to the Farseer physics engine and demonstrate basic physics and collisions.  This topics covered here could justify a stand-alone video.  However this topic will only present the concepts, a basic implementation and provide references for more information.

19.    Getting started with simple 3D models in XNA
This topic could probably justify a stand-alone video however we will discuss the tools and concepts associated with working with simple 3D models.

20.    Marketplace and submitting applications
Do a walk through on the submission process for putting an application into the Marketplace, this will include what will be checked as part of the certification process.

Look for this coming to your PC in the Fall of 2010

-twb