WP7 Tutorial 3 : Building & Testing Applications in the WP Emulator

Till now, as a part of our WP7 Tutorial Series, we have seen how to create a Windows Phone project and also what are the types of files included in this basic Windows Phone project template.

In this tutorial we are going to see how can we build a project in VS2010 and Test the code, so as to check for errors.

Deploying to Windows Phone Emulator :
1. In View Menu Select OUTPUT top open the output Window

2. To build the project you can either debug or Press SHIFT + F6 key combination to compile the projects in the solution

3. Review the output window and trace the messages you get during building the project.

4. Remember that while building the project you should not get any compile time errors, if there are any errors those will be seen in output window in an error list. VS displays 3 types of problems listed as error – warnings – messages. You can also open the error list from the view menu.

5. Verify that the target of the deployment is the Windows Phone Emulator. To do this, ensure that Windows Phone 7 Emulator is selected in the Select Device drop down next to the Start Debugging button on the toolbar.

6. Press F5 to launch the application in the Windows Phone Emulator. Notice that a device emulator window appears and there is a pause while Visual Studio sets up the emulator environment and deploys the application image.

You can even use internet in that emulator if you are not deploying your application.

7. Press SHIFT + F5 or click the Stop button in the toolbar to detach the debugger and end the debugging session. Do not close the emulator window.

Thats it!
Stay tuned for our next article “Designing the User Interface”.