Free ebook: Programming Windows Phone 7, by Charles Petzold

Gang, we’re done! 24 chapters, about 1,000 pages. Congratulations to Charles, who has outdone himself!

Speaking for Charles and for the Windows Phone 7 team, we hope that you will enjoy Programming Windows Phone 7:

You can download a PDF here (38.6 MB).

And you can download the ebook’s sample code here (5.03 MB).

To give you a sense of this offering, here is Charles’s Introduction—beneath that you’ll find the ebook’s full Table of Contents:

Introduction

This book is a gift from the Windows Phone 7 team at Microsoft to the programming community, and I am proud to have been a part of it. Within the pages that follow, I show you the basics of writing applications for Windows Phone 7 using the C# programming language with the Silverlight and XNA 2D frameworks.

Yes, Programming Windows Phone 7 is truly a free download, but for those readers who still love paper—as I certainly do—this book will also be available (for sale) divided into two fully-indexed print editions: Microsoft Silverlight Programming for Windows Phone 7 and Microsoft XNA Framework Programming for Windows Phone 7. [Note from Devon: we should have these ready for order in December 2010.]

With the money you’ve saved downloading this book, please buy other books. Despite the plethora of information available online, books are still the best way to learn about programming within a coherent and cohesive tutorial narrative. Every book sale brings a tear of joy to an author’s eye, so please help make them weep overflowing rivers.

In particular, you might want to buy other books to supplement the material in this book. For example, I barely mention Web services in this book, and that’s a serious deficiency because Web services are likely to become increasingly important in Windows Phone 7 applications. My coverage of XNA is limited to 2D graphics and while I hope to add several 3D chapters in the next edition of this book, I don’t really get into the whole Xbox LIVE community aspect of game development. Nor do I discuss any programming tools beyond Visual Studio—not even Expression Blend.

My publisher Microsoft Press has a couple additional Windows Phone 7 books coming soon: Windows Phone 7 Silverlight Development Step by Step by Andy Wigley & Peter Foot offers a more tools-oriented approach. Although Michael Stroh’s Windows Phone 7 Plain & Simple is a guide to using the phone rather than developing for it, I suspect it will give developers some insights and ideas.

Moreover, I also hear that my old friend Doug Boling is working hard on a Windows Phone 7 enterprise-programming book that is likely to be considered his masterpiece. Be sure to check out that one.

Read more: Microsoft Press

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