Resources

This page contains quick links to resources, tips & tricks, documentation and anything helpful for Universal Windows Platform development (UWP) and legacy WP/WinRT. If you have anything you’d like me to post here, find me on Twitter™ @lancewmccarthy.

Windows 10 UWP Resources

Here are my highly recommended resources for building Windows Universal apps:

Visual Studio tooling and SDKs

• Developer Tools and SDKs Downloads – Visual Studio 2015
• Visual Studio Extensions
• Visual Studio Online (free TFS, deeply integrated with VS2015)

Official development, design and publishing UWP docs

• Developing for Windows 10  -What’s New
• Get Started
• Design
• Develop
• Publish

Amazing online Microsoft Virtual Academy courses for UWP

• Level 100 (Beginner)
  • Windows 10 development for absolute beginners
  • Quick Start Challenge: UWP apps in Visual Studio
  • Advanced Windows 10 development with the Office 365 APIs
  • Getting started with windows 10 for IT professionals
• Level 200 (Intermediate)
  • Windows 10: Getting started with UWP
  • Windows 10: DataBinding
  • Windows 10: Inking and InkCanvas
  • Windows 10: Speech and Cortana Integration
  • Windows 10: Developing Responsive and Adaptive UIs
  • Windows 10: LiveTiles and Notifications
  • Windows 10: App patterns and navigation
  • Windows 10: Managing the app lifecycle
  • Building Windows 10 Games with Unity 5

The best place to find official and community Windows 10 related videos, sample project and tutorials

• Channel 9

Blogs

• Microsoft’s “Building Apps for Windows” blog
• Arun Singh’s blog (Microsoft employee, on UWP team)

Podcasts

• Windows Developer Show (formerly the WPDevShow. A must-listen!)
• and the companion WindowsDevShow Newsletter
• Windows Weekly (Mary Jo Foley & Paul Thurott)
• Glance and Go Radio

Other

• If you are a student,  join DreamSpark
• If you are a small business, join Bizspark and if you are registering with DevCenter as an enterprise, familiarize yourself with this.

API List (you know, for app ideas)

Here is a list of APIs to help give you app ideas

• Amazon Web Services
• Bit.ly
• Box.net
• Compete
• Constant Contact
• Datasift
• Disqus
• Dropbox
• Dwolla
• eBay
• Etsy
• Eventbrite
• Evernote
• Facebook
• Factual
• Flickr
• FourSquare
• Full Contact
• Google Maps
• Google+
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Meetup
• Naver Open API (Wpdev DLLs here)
• NewsBlur
• Programmable Web (recommended)
• RapLeaf
• SalesForce
• SendGrid
• SkyDrive
• Stripe
• The EchoNest
• Twilio
• Twitter
• USA.gov API endpoints, resources and documentation
• Wolfram Alpha
• Xero
• Zappos

Legacy Resources (WP8 + Win8)

If you are new to Windows Phone development

• Bob Tabor’s Absolute Beginner Series
  • WP7 watch this series (obsolete do not use for anything but legacy support)
  • Windows Phone 8.0 (obsolete do not use for anything but legacy support)
  • Windows Phone 8.1 (obsolete do not use for anything but legacy support)
• Windows Phone 8.1 Jumpstart w/Andy Wigley and Matthias Shapiro (highly recommended)

Build 2013 & 2014 Windows Phone sessions

This link will bring you to my blog post with all the Build 2014 Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1 related videos.

Here are the Build 2013 Videos for Windows Phone 8.0:

Foundational

• Windows Phone: Introducing App Development, Sam George
• Windows Phone: Design for Developers, Corrina Black
• Windows Phone: App Foundation, Thomas Fennel
• Windows Phone: Building UI in XAML, Shawn Oster
• Windows Phone Game Development Basics, Joao Lucas Guberman Raza
• Windows Phone: Using Native (C++) Code in Your Apps, Tim Laverty

Key Developer Scenarios

• Windows Phone: Tiles, Lock, & Notifications, Thomas Fennel
• Windows Phone: Building a Camera App, Presented by Nokia, Berthier Lemieux, Nokia
• Windows Phone: Maximizing App Revenue, Bernardo Zamora
• Windows Phone: Networking, Peter Torr
• Windows Phone: App-to-App Communications, Sean McKenna
• Windows Phone: Building the Best Mapping Apps for Windows Phone Using the Here Platform, Mike O’Malley

Best Practices

• Windows Phone: Developer Best Practices & How to Maximize Performance, Stefan Wick
• Real Talk: Sharing Code Between the Windows & Windows Phone Platforms, Matt Hidinger
• The Story of Bringing Nokia Music from Windows Phone to Windows 8, Matthew Cooper, Craig Pugsley, Nokia
• Windows Phone: Learn from the Winners, Bryan Tomlinson, Winners
• Windows Phone: Low Mem & Hardware Constraints, Andrew Whitechappel
• Windows Phone: This App Is Brought to You by MVVM– Hulu Case Study, Matthias Shapiro, Zachary Pinter (Hulu)

Miscellaneous resources

Here is the beginning of the miscellaneous resources list to get you started, more links under the “more links”section towards the bottom of the page.

• Windows Phone 8 developer platform highlights
• WP8 API Quickstart PDF (highly recommended resource)
• Must Have! Proximity Tapper add-on for WP emulator
• Windows Phone 8 training course download (highly recommended)
• Example Applications
• Developer Downloads
• Visual Studio 2012 and WPDev
• What’s new in Windows Phone 8 (Justin Angel)
• What’s new in the Windows Phone Store (Developer Perspective)
• How to install the WP8 SDK via Nuget
• 8 steps you can try to fix Window Phone 8 emulator error
• Live Tiles: A Windows Phone developer roundtable
• Live Tile sizes and template details
• Microsoft Fanboys (a cool site that aggregates developer and enthusiast content)
• How to use the new Nokia Maps API for Windows Phone 8
• Increase Monetization in your apps with In App Purchasing
• GameMaker. Write once & deploy to Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8
• Using Font Awesome in your app (allows you to place icons by using a font Unicode, pretty cool)
• (more wpdev links continued after getting started links)

 

Getting Started Links

• Windows Phone Design
• Basics
• Principles
• Process
• Library
• Ebook from Travis Lowdermilk on User-Centered Design
• Great PDF of design assets and dimensions
• Templarian’s must-have Metro Icon set (I’ve been using  these since his first set)
• Windows Phone Development
• Get Started
• Create your first app
• Register your phone
• What’s new in the SDK
• Build
• Design Library
• Developing Apps
• Testing Apps
• Monetizing Apps(also see the Nokia Ad Exchange link above)
• API Reference
• Building together with Windows 8

Videos

• Dev Center Videos
• Channel 9 Videos
• Windows Phone design bootcamp
• Inside Windows Phone
• Peter Torr: What Windows Phone 8 means for developers
• Windows Phone 8: Application Model from //Build/ 2012
• Building Windows Phone 8 XAML applications
• How to leverage your code across Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8
• Windows Phone 8 Native C/C++ Game Development

more links…

• Compile in the the cloud! Must Read
• Async and Await for Http networking on Windows Phone by Andy Wigley
• Use Mayhem to control your PC from your Windows Phone!
• Dot Morten SharpGIS WebClient for WP8 and Windows 8
• Shared code between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8
• @CodingChick’s WP8 posts
• Planning on going native? See this post.
• Windows (Phone) 8 NFC Scenarios
• NFC tag recommendations and tips
• Windows Phone 8 SDK and using the emulator on a Virtual Machine
• Using Async & Await on Windows Phone 7(x)
• How to use Fast Resume
• Beware when using D3D feature Level 11 in the emulator
• The model Windows Phone 8 template issue
• Windows Phone Toolkit- CodePlex
• ESPN and PayPal APIs
• Unity 4.0
• Speech API: Blogged
• Using C++ in your apps
• Using MVVM Relay Commands in your app
• Test your app in different network scenarios via “Network Simluation”
• Create a Marble Maze game for the 8’s
• Windows Phone 8: Evolution of the Runtime & Application Compatibility
• Facebook C# SDK with a branch for WP8 support
• Measuring Memory consumption of a StackPanel
• Converting textures to .dds
• How to use Marketplace Tasks in Windows Phone 8
• Matthias Shapiro’s blog (MS Windows Phone Evangelist)
• Free Microsoft E-Book on Advanced WPDev and connecting to the cloud
• Overview of Windows Phone 8 Sensors (slides and code)
• Properly coding Images in your Windows Phone application
• Motion API for the XNA AR Camera
• Windows Phone Toolkit Overview
• How to avoid application settings corruption when a background agent is used
• Windows Phone Geeks series on how to use Isolated Storage
• Extracting your app’s GUID programmatically to share as a link
• Convert a CSV file and launch it with Excel on the phone
• Trick to auto unlock your wp8 device before debugging
• Trick to detect if your app is running in Kid’s Corner
• How to get device information programmatically
• Optimizing Battery Consumption in your apps (from images and graphics to data transmissions and CPU usage)
• Using Mono to build your Windows Phone app? See Shmueli Enlard’s tip on importing resources.
• Rajen’s Tech Tidbits: Storage on WP8 and Win8 Part One and Part Two (excellent Recap!)
• Implementing Orientation Lock in your apps
• Microsoft Media Player Framework for Windows Phone 8
• How to pass arguments to an app activated by a toast notification
• Access WP8 live tiles from a WP7.1 app
• (SLART) Augmented Reality for Windows Phone and Silverlight
• MUST HAVE Nuget packages for WP8 and Windows 8
• MVVM ApplicationBar sample project and GitHub
• Advanced Video Recording options on WP8
• Changing the default theme colors programmatically
• Pubcenter Ad errors and fixes
• Full demo app usage of ZXing library for Windows Phone 8
• PCL of SCOREID library
• How to debug HTTPWebrequest errors
• Configure the WP8 emulator to work with Fiddler
• OData client tools for Windows Phone apps
• 40 great tips on how to make more money with In App Purchasing
• Joost van Schaik’s (@localjoost) blog. Great resource to follow, here is the famous Windows Phone utilities
• Xfiles: Converting DirectX .X files for use in games
• ADRotator for Windows Phone XNA
• ADRotator for Silverlight (WP7)
• XNA to MonoGame and beyond
• MonoGame Content Types and Custom Model types
• MonoGame: Using libraries with Windows Phone projects
• MonoGame: Building portable solutions
• You are the controller: WP7 to Windows 8 networking
• Auto Scaling WVGA XNA games to WXGA and 720P with MonoGame for WP8
• HTML5- Porting an existing HTML5/JS game to Windows Phone in 5 minutes (Jesse Freeman)
• Setting your WP app’s startup page, without typing!
• Google Analytics SDK for Windows Phone
• SQLite WinRT for Windows and Windows Phone: Installation
• Navigating pages in your WP8 app like you would in Windows 8
• Basic Networking support in Windows Phone 8 (WPDev blog)
• MVVM – A Windows Phone scenario
• Checking for updates from within a Windows Phone app
• Proximity in Windows Phone 8 (WPDev Blog)
• How to fix network connectivity issues in the Emulator
• How to make a Facebook-like settings pane in your WP8 app

This is the Michael Crump section.

• Build an Interactive Home Screen Experience with Telerik HubTile for WP8
• Create an offline installer for the Windows Phone SDK
• Get Detailed Diagnostics Reports from your Windows Phone 8 apps with CloudDiagnostics
• Windows 8 XAML and Windows Phone 8 Q2 2013 Webinar Resources
• Announcing RadControls for Windows Phone Q2 2013 Beta: ImageEditor and Async Support in RadMessageBox
• Create a twitter app from scratch using the RadControls for WP
• SilverlightShow webinar on the new WP8 features
• Windows Phone 8 project template without the fluff
• Who moved my cheese? Splash screens in WP8
• A list of great build videos for WP8
• Taking a look at registering a new WP8 device and syncing content
• See the complete WP8 works of Michael Crump here!
• Speech Recognition
• MultiResolutionImage
• DataForm (Part 1)
• DataForm (Part 2)
• Dynamic AppBars for Conference Buddy
• Windows Phone 8 SDK and FAS fix
• 1078 free icons for your games/apps

Windows 8 related material but also applies to Windows Phone

• Windows 8 Design Handbook
• Case Study: Moving Windows Phone 7 app to Windows 8
• Rotating List items (GridView, but technique works with other items)
• DNS Client for Windows and Windows Phone
• Dave Davis: Controlling the DataTemplate
• Increase the performance of your app by 46% with 2 lines of code
• HttpClient for Windows Phone 8 (PCL included)
• APIMASH: Using APIs to make compelling Windows apps
• File handling with Windows Phone 8 (new storage APIs)
• The undocumented API Meesier objects and Earthquake mashup

Windows 8 Stuff you may find useful

• Live tile templates
• Modern UI WPF Templates (think Zune)
• 50 great Windows 8 templates
• Tons of GREAT windows 8 application templates (click the Build tab)
• Deploying App Package to your Microsoft Surface RT via thumb drive
• Twitter integration in Windows 8 development
• What iOS developers should know about Windows 8
• Developing games for Windows 8
• Easily integrate Twitter into your app
• Programmatically add “next/previous” functionality to your FlipView
• Maelstrom: a 3D kinect-enabled game
• Microsoft Media Player Framework for Windows 8
• Joost van Schaik’s Windows 8 port of the Windows Phone Utilities and WinRT behaviors
• Scrolling a GridView when the mouse moves to the edge
• FlyOuts and menus for Windows 8
• Testing your APIMASH with Fiddler

Windows Phone and Netduino/Gadgeteer/Arduino/ fun

• Matt Cavanaugh (@roguecode) has made some great projects, find them on his blog.
• My first Netduino project: Windows Phone Sonar Ruler
• My next project: Windows Phone Bluetooth Disco
• Netduino for beginners by Georgi
• Netduino home page
• DevHammer (G. Andrew Duthie) is an avid Gadgeteer. Here’s one of his awesome exploits.

General topic articles about mobile app development

How to succeed with your mobile app

How to write portable code (Portable Class Libraries aka PCLs)