Monthly Archives: August 2013

Getting Started With Windows Phone Development

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Windows Phone is the easiest platform to develop for.

By now there are two versions of this mobile operating system: Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8. The main problem is that you can run a Windows Phone 7 app on Windows Phone 8 smartphone, but cannot install a Windows Phone 8 app on a Windows Phone 7 smartphone. At the same time Microsoft doesn’t provide an opportunity to upgrade Windows Phone 7 operating system to Windows Phone 8.

That is why I will describe the development for Windows Phone 7, so that your app will be accessible for all Windows Phone devices.

You need to download and install the following tools for getting started with the development for Windows Phone:

  1. Microsoft Visual Studio. This is the best IDE in my opinion. It is powerful and provides a lot of tools for convenient software development. It has the Express Edition which can be downloaded for free.
  2. Windows Phone SDK (emulator is included into the SDK). It is also a free tool. You can choose between downloading the SDK for Windows Phone 8 and the SDK for Windows Phone 7 (the latest OS version is numbered 7.8).

After downloading and installing this software you can start write your first app for Windows Phone.

Getting Started With Android Development

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This article is for those who would like to get started with Android development without any prior knowledge.

Development for Android can be done using a bunch of different tools. Let’s start with enumeration of IDEs:

  1. Eclipse. It is the most widespread IDE for Android development. If you use Eclipse, you also get access to a lot of existing plugins (e.g. GitHub for Eclipse).
  2. IntellijIDEA – an IDE for Java from JetBrains.
  3. Android Studio. This is an IDE from Google which has been recently launched. Now it is available as early access preview.

Let me describe the process of getting started with Android development for Eclipse as soon as it is the most popular IDE. The process of installation of all necessary software consists of 3 steps:

  1.  First of all, you need to download and install Eclipse itself.
  2. Then, you need to install Android SDK for the development itself.
  3. Finally, you need to install Android ADT Plugin to join the IDE with the SDK and to be able to manage emulators, etc.

If you are a beginner level Android developer, you may find the following learning resources useful: