Now that the veil has finally been lifted, I can *finally* talk about our plans around Windows Phone 7 development. To kick things off, I thought it might be best to share some resources with you to help you get started down the Windows Phone 7 Series development path.

There is a tremendous amount of excitement and buzz that has been generated from our recent announcements with Windows Phone 7, culminating in last weeks announcements at MIX that the developer/designer tools will be FREE. Yes… FREE!

A few notes upfront first…For the design tools, there are 3 separate packages that need to be downloaded and installed. The Expression tools team wanted to get all the bits to everyone as soon as possible but didn’t have the time to create a single package for all of the necessary bits. You will need all 3 packages to get all of the features to build Windows Phone 7 applications with Expression Blend. If you’re not going to crack open Expression Blend, than no worries. These packages aren’t required if you’re just installing the Dev Tools. 

Also, be sure to read the Developer Tools release notes. There is some important information in there regarding potential install issues as well as a few bugs that exist in the tooling at this time. One of the leading questions people ask is, will the tools run in a virtualized environment. The short answer is – No. However, I have the tools running in a BootToVHD setup I have running on one of my development machines. Scott Hanselman provides a great writeup on how to get a BootToVHD environment up and running.

Here’s what you need to start building Windows Phone 7 Series applications and games…

Tools:

• Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (be sure to read the Release Notes)
       includes:
       – Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP
       – Windows Phone Emulator CTP
       – Silverlight for Windows Phone CTP
       – XNA 4.0 Game Studio CTP
• Expression Blend 4 Beta
• Microsoft Expression Blend Add-in Preview for Windows Phone
• Microsoft Expression Blend SDK Preview for Windows Phone

Learning Resources:

• Windows Phone for Developers
• Windows Phone Developer Documentation on MSDN
• Code Samples
• Developer Guides:
  • Application Platform Overview for Windows Phone
  • Windows Phone UI Design and Interaction Guide
  • Designing Web Sites for Phone Browsers
• Download a preview of Charles Petzold’s new book – Programming Windows Phone 7 Series
• MIX Sessions on Windows Phone:
  • Changing our Game – an Introduction to Windows Phone 7 Series (Joe Belfiore)
  • Authoring for Windows Phone, Silverlight 4 and WPF 4 with Expression Blend (Christian Schormann, Peter Blois)
  • Overview of the Windows Phone 7 Series Application Platform (Charlie Kindel)
  • Windows Phone UI and Design Language (Chad Roberts, michael Smuga, Albert Shum)
  • Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight, Part 1 (Mike Harsh)
  • Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight, Part 2 (Peter Torr)
  • Windows Phone Application Platform Architecture (Istvan Cseri)
  • Development and Debugging Tools for Building XNA Games for Windows Phone (Cullen Waters)
  • Distributing and Monetizing Windows Phone Applications and Games (John Bruno, Todd Briggs)
  • Building Windows Phone Games (Michael Klucher)
  • Building a High Performance 3D Game for Windows Phone (Shawn Hargreaves, Tomas Vykruta)
  • Designing and Developing for the Rich Mobile Web (Joe Marini)
  • Silverlight Performance on Windows Phone (Seema Ramchandani)

Blogs to Know:

• Charlie Kindel – Windows Phone Developer Experience
• Windows Phone Developer Blog
• Christian Schormann – Expression Blend
• Peter Blois – Expression Blend
• Andre Vrignaud – Mobile Gaming
• Shawn Hargreaves – XNA
• Michael Klucher – XNA
• Twitter: @wp7dev