We recently announced the availability of the Windows Phone 8.0 SDK. The fun part is it includes development support for Windows Phone 8, support for C++ games and apps, an updated emulator for Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone support for Visual Studio 2012 (both 7 and 8), and is easier to port apps between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Phew!
If you don’t have Visual Studio, never fear! You can use Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Phone to create your apps. If you’ve already got Visual Studio 2012 Professional, Premium, or Ultimatethen getting the SDK means you’ll get Windows Phone development projects added to your IDE.
Top 10 features are:
1. New Windows Phone dev? You can bring your existing skills to start creating apps right away. Use XAML/.NET to write apps or DirectX/C++ to create games for Windows Phone.
2. Tie Windows Phone apps with web services to create outstanding experiences with Visual Studio Professional or higher with the Windows Phone add-in.
3. Reduce development time for multi-platform games by using C++.
4. Port existing OpenGL games to DirectX to take advantage of existing game libraries and logic with minimal alterations.
5. Get clean web based game rendering with the improved HTML5 & JavaScript support in the IE10 web browser control.
6. Fine tune your users’ experiences by taking advantage of Blend for Visual Studio 2012.
7. Simulate the real world when testing your apps and games with the Windows Phone Emulator.
8. Find CPU and memory issues faster with the Profiler.
9. Minimize app certification time by using the pre-test for Windows Phone Store technical certification with Test Kit.
10. Develop apps using Visual Studio 2012, one of the most productive integrated development environments (IDE) for turning ideas into software.
If you want to find out more there’s a London Windows Phone Dev Camp happening on the 15th November – Just search United Kingdom to find the event!
Useful Links
- Announcing the new Windows Phone 8 Developer Platform by Kevin Gallo
- Windows Phone 8 SDK at the Download Center
- Updated Windows Phone Dev Center
- Visual Studio Blog – Introducing Windows Phone SDK 8.0
- .Net Framework Blog – Announcing the release of the .NET Framework for Windows Phone 8
- Windows Phone Blog – Meet Windows Phone 8
- Windows Phone Dev Center Twitter Feed
- Windows Phone Twitter Feed
- Windows Phone Dev Camps
