WP7 Tutorial 2: Solution Explorer briefed

As a part of our WP7 Tutorial Series, we have seen how to create a Silverlight project for WP7 in Visual Studio 2010 for Windows Phone 7.  In this tutorial we will explain about all the files included in  system explorer i.e all those classes and libraries that define a basic Windows Phone 7 application.

The HelloPhone project contains the following items:

Right-click App.xaml in Solution Explorer and choose View Designer. Notice that the file contains XAML markup with an Application root element and inside it an Application. Resources section with the definition of colors, brushes, and style elements.

This class encapsulates a Silverlight for Windows Phone application and provides its entry point. It also contains application-level resources such as colors, brushes and style objects used throughout the application. You can completely update the visual appearance of the application by changing the definitions contained in this file, much like CSS style sheets control the appearance of HTML pages.

MainPage.xaml

This  Defines the Main UI of the Application.The designer shows the document in split view. One pane displays the XAML markup and the other one shows a design view with a WYSIWYG representation of the user interface elements.

XAML

You can create visible UI elements in the declarative XAML markup. You can then use a separate code-behind file to respond to events and manipulate the objects you declared in XAML. An XAML-based declarative language is very intuitive for creating interfaces from prototype to production, especially for people with a background in Web design and technologies.

ApplicationIcon.png

It contains icons that defines the quick launch screen on the emulator. You can edit the in any of the image editing tool

like paint. You can also open it in Default image editor of Visual Studio 2010.

Refrences

Windows phone applications use a set of applications or codes that are being stored in some classes. These classes are stored in some defined Libraries. To use this functionality, the application needs to reference the corresponding libraries that implement these services. It contains regular Silverlight assemblies as well as assemblies specific to the Windows Phone platform (as it is a Silverlight based project).

Properties

The project’s Properties window is the only way to edit the WP manifest file, as shown in the following figure. To open this window, right-click the HelloPhone project in the Solution Explorer and select Properties.

The Windows Phone project properties window allows you to modify some phone-specific properties. These properties relate to the deployment and appearance of the application on the device. The parameters are stored in the WMAppManifest.xml file.

In the next tutorial we will cover “Building and Testing the Application in the Windows Phone Emulator”. Stay Tuned.