Just Getting Started: Silverlight for Windows Phone
MIX10 didn't disappoint. Microsoft delivered on its promise to unveil the early stage Windows Phone application platform and got people talking. Oscar Wilde would approve.
The tools are free, tutorials and other resources are hitting the Web. Today Scott Guthrie posted a tutorial on his blog that walks you through the 'Twitter' and 'Hello World' Silverlight for Windows Phone apps that he created onstage during the keynote.
Silverlight for Windows Phone appears to be Silverlight 3 with support for device-specific features, and some Silverlight 4 functionality--which may evolve when SL4 is released next month. During his keynote on Monday, Guthrie indicated that Silverlight for Windows Phone is full fledged Silverlight.
"After playing around with the framework and tools a little bit, I have found that to be not 100 [percent] true," reported Senior Software Architect Bart Czernicki in his Silverlight Hack blog on Tuesday.
Some of those differences are based on obvious device/performance/security constraints, others are related to .NET Compact Framework limitations -- Silverlight for Windows Phone runs in .NET CF -- and a few changes appear to be version 1 decisions.
Microsoft outlined the differences between Silverlight 3 for Windows and Silverlight for Windows Phone on MSDN, notably it does not support mobile RIA:
"Silverlight applications on Windows Phone are hosted on the client device and do not run inside of a browser. Silverlight features that are based on a browser host are not supported. These features include the HTML DOM bridge, JavaScript programmability, and the Silverlight plug-in object reference."
The Silverlight for Windows Phone technology has "a list of about 30 to 50 things [that are] different," observed Czernicki. "While these can be considered 'advanced' features, they still are different," he said.
In particular Czernicki cites the .NET CF limitations, support for out-of-browser Silverlight apps only, apparent issues with Silverlight controls that require JavaScript or COM including the popular Bing Maps control and Silverlight Toolkit charts, and for now, C# only development.
He summed up his views on the early technical previews this way:
"While it is great that Microsoft succeeded in delivering a platform that uses the same Silverlight core and tools, it would have been nice to have a full blown Silverlight runtime on the Windows Phone 7. If that was the case, patterns like MVVM would be fantastic and a single Silverlight compile and simply swapping out the Views (one for mobile and another for the web) would be fantastic."
Keep in mind that Silverlight for Windows Phone is in the preview stage. It's hard to tell what is nailed down and what isn't. Windows Azure changed dramatically from the initial previews at PDC08 to the commercial release in February. The timeline here is only about six months until WP7 devices show up at retail, which may mean fewer changes.
The Windows Phone Marketplace, services and development community will ultimately drive sales of WP7 devices. Developer and community feedback about missing features or dev tools may get key functionality on the short list, or even lead to a few changes before devices with the new platform reach store shelves.
If you are downloading the free Windows Phone Developer Tools or thinking about building mobile apps, we want to hear from you. The Visual Studio Magazine cover story in May looks at the new Windows Phone platform. Express you views on Silverlight for Windows Phone. Drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 03/19/2010 at 4:18 PM