How is programming Silverlight on Window Phone 7 different from a browser plugin?

Question

I recently spoke with another developer, and we started discussing the development of Window Phone 7. Their thoughts, from what they heard (that is, do not own knowledge), was actually just a development of Silverlight. My reaction was that today I see a lot of Silverlight posts called "Windows Phone 7", so there should be some differences between them.

So I'm wondering what are the differences between developing for WP7 v. browser plugin.

What I can come up with but seem obvious:

• WP7 Silverlight is different from SL 4.0, but more like SL 3.5 +
• hardware is different (memory \ cpu)
• I assume there are several different controls
• you need to consider the form factor

Do not discount the above list, which is important, but what else is needed when developing a Silverlight application for the WP7 v plugin. browser?

thanks

Answer 1

There are many technical differences, and of course there are many that give you a bullet list. However, there are indeed a few real differences that are of great importance for developing applications for WP7.

Its touch interface

Quite a lot of applications that I played with from the market, it seems that the developers are struggling to understand the concept of a touch interface. It is clear that many of them are still using the left mouse event when they need to look for the “Tap” gesture. This may disappoint users trying to “click” and find that they “clicked” instead.

So make sure you use a gesture-based framework (the toolkit has one) so you don't annoy users.

Your application will be a headstone

WP7 jealously decides its resources. Please note in an instant that your application may be deactivated as the search screen or home screen is called up. The unstable state of your application will be lost. The WP7 API includes several ways to store key small pieces of data when your application receives "tombstones", so when a user returns to it, he should be able to restore almost the same state as he had before. However, this is not done automatically, and you must encode it.

Again, some of the applications on the market do not do this well, and when you have Omnia 7, which has a seriously sensitive search button, which can be very frustrating.

Network access and other services are intermittent

If you are developing a connected application, you need to put up with a change in network access or loss of access.

Read the manual

Despite the fact that there are many resources, you can quickly and quickly launch devs, and the devil is always in the details. I recommend that you at least start by reading Basic Concepts for Windows Phone , which will cover some of these issues.

Answer 2

TBH is a lot. Some of them:

• Touch input and mouse clicks

• Sounds and music

  Silverlight 4.0 "/content/song.wma"

  Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 "content / song.wav" (mind slash)

• Philosophy of navigation

• WP7 SL has two threads by default. One (composer stream) starts the entire animation, the second (user interface stream) starts the rest.

• The controls have very different default behavior and look

• and many other operating systems are implemented

Answer 3

Better than any explanation, you should refer to the official site.

Silverlight for WP supports (as per the same document):

Hardware acceleration for video and graphics Accelerometer for motion sensing Multi-touch Camera and microphone Location awareness Push notifications Native phone functionality 

It does not have regular COM bundles and has limited access to reflection among all restrictions.

For a complete list of features supported in Silverlight for Windows Phone, read this document .