Windows Phone 7 Developer Guide from Microsoft Patterns and Practices

There’s a group at Microsoft called Patterns and Practices whose job is to provide developers with guidance and advice on the best ways to write software for our platforms. If you visit their site, you’ll find material to help you make better software design and technology selection decisions, understand important concepts that will help you get the job done and even get some “best practices” code to get you started.

If you’re developing for Windows Phone 7, you’ll want to check out Patterns and Practices’ Windows Phone 7 Developer Guide, which covers recommended ways to build WP7 apps with Silverlight and how to take advantage of of web- and cloud-based services. It’s the perfect follow-up to any of the “Intro to Windows Phone 7” books – Charles Petzold’s WP7 book is a good start, and it’s free, too – once you’ve got a handle on the basics, you’ll want to read it. It builds on a scenario in which Tailspin, a fictitious company building a WP7 client for an existing cloud-based application and covers building a mobile client, using services on the phone, connecting with services and interacting with Windows Marketplace.

Windows Phone 7 Developer Guide is available in a couple of forms:

• Free and online on the Patterns and Practices site
• In ebook (USD$25.99) and “dead tree” (USD$38.49, includes ebook) form from O’Reilly.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.