Recently, I contributed an article on the Marketplace Test Kit to Jeff Blankenburg’s 31-days of Mango. The Marketplace Test Kit should be used by all Windows Phone developers to perform a check-point on their app, and it’s requirements, prior to submitting it to the Marketplace. If your app doesn’t pass the test kit, it will certainly fail certification in the Marketplace submission process.

One of the Automated Tests within the test kit is to verify you have the correct sized images and file type requirements for your Marketplace artwork.

These are the required artwork items to showcase your app within the various sections of the Marketplace:

One of the attendees from our recent Windows Phone Accelerator labs pinged me the other day for an issue she was having with her images and the Marketplace Test Kit. The Test Kit was reporting an error that stated she had an invalid image size where it was expecting an image size of 62×62.

If you look at the Test Kit, it isn’t asking for an image of 62×62. However… there is a requirement for a 62×62 image, it’s just not listed in the Marketplace Test Kit. The requirement is for the actual application’s icon. This is the icon that is displayed the in application list of the phone once a user downloads your app. There’s also another image that is required at a size of 173×173 (same as the Large Marketplace image) that is your application’s tile for when someone pins your app to their start screen.

So in all, the Marketplace Test Kit is testing image requirements for 5 different tile images. The 3 images required for the Marketplace and the 2 images required for your application on the phone:

You set your small and large app icon’s within your projects Property Page. These are than defined within the WPAppManfest.xml file. It might look confusing, but the Background image property is your application’s Start Screen tile.

Truth be told, the Test Kit validates additional images as it is required that you have at least one screen shot of your app with a size of 800×480 pixels. So don’t forget those images as well. Thankfully, we now have the Screen Capture tool in the Windows Phone Emulator.

You can find all of the requirements for your applications artwork in the Windows Phone Marketplace Documentation.

I’d like to thank all of those you attended our recent Windows Phone Boot Camp. We covered a lot of material in a very short amount of time. The purpose of the boot camps were to provide an introduction along with some solid guidance for developers jumping into Windows Phone development.

Let me know how your Windows Phone development is going and if there’s anything I can do to help you succeed!

As promised, here is the content presented along with links to the demos and resources discussed…

Session Content

• Introduction to Silverlight for Windows Phone: Slides, Demos
• Live Tiles and Push Notifications: Slides, Demos
• Making Money with Windows Phone: Slides

Resources

Download the Windows Phone SDK & Tools

AppHub (Marketplace, Forums, Education)

Windows Phone Developers Blog

Inside Windows Phone on Channel9

Windows Phone Documentation

Windows Phone Code Samples on MSDN

“How To” Articles

“How Do I” Videos

Windows Phone Labs

Windows Phone Quick Starts

Windows Phone UX Guidelines

Design Toolbox

Silverlight Toolkit for Windows Phone

patterns & practices – Windows Phone Developer Guide

Porting to Windows Phone

One of the things that me and my colleagues are charged with is helping create ROCK STAR developers for the Windows Phone platform. We know there are a lot of developers out there who are either working on an app but are stuck for various reasons or have a great idea but need the motivation to get started.

I’m happy to announce that we have scheduled a number of Windows Phone Accelerator Labs coming to Columbus, Minneapolis, Chicago and Dallas. The purpose of these FREE 3-day developer retreats is to give you an opportunity to work on your Windows Phone app with experts on hand to help you build, test and deploy your apps into the Windows Phone Marketplace. You will get hands-on technical assistance and developer phones for testing.

These labs are targeted for specific individuals who are currently working on apps and need assistance. Seating is very limited and we will qualify attendees through an application process.

Success will be measured with you submitting your app(s) to the Marketplace at the end of the lab.

Prerequisites

You should come prepared with your own development machine with the developer tools already installed. You can review the AppHub where you can learn about application features, understand common task for Apps and register and load your App.

Lab Locations/Dates

We’ve just added another Windows Phone Boot Camp to the schedule for Chicago on November 18th. This will be a free, full-day of learning and hands-on development around Windows Phone. If you’re a current mobile developer on those other platforms or want to learn more about building apps on Windows Phone, this is the perfect intro event for you.

Windows Phone Boot Camp
November 18th, 2011
Microsoft Technology Center, Chicago
Register at http://aka.ms/wpchicago

UPDATE: We’ve added another Boot Camp to take place in Chicago on November 18th! Register at http://aka.ms/wpchicago.

Last year, my team ran a series of boot camps to introduce the ins-and-outs of developing Windows Phone applications to the masses. In honor of the upcoming release of Windows Phone 7.5, I’m happy to announce a new round of events taking place to lay down the new development features in Windows Phone 7.5. These boot camps are a free, full-day learning environment to help you become a Rock Star developer on Windows Phone.

We kick this round of boot camps off with a special 2-day event in Austin, TX on October 3-4. The first day will be our standard boot camp, where as the 2nd day will be a full hands-on lab learning opportunity with experts on hand to help you along the way. We’ll follow up with events in Dallas (Oct. 11), Columbus, OH (Oct. 12), Minneapolis (Nov. 10) and Chicago (Nov. 18).

Get more details for each city at:

For additional cities across the US, check out http://msdnevents.com.