The incomplete list of impolite WP7 dev requests
In my previous list of WP7 user requests, I piled all of my user hopes and dreams for my new WP7 phone (delivery date: who the hell knows) onto the universe as a way to make good things happen. And all that’s fine, but I’m not just a user; like most of my readers, I’m also a developer and have a need to control my phone with code. I have a long list of applications I want to write and an even longer list of applications I want other developers to write for me.
Today at 1:30p is the first public presentations of how to do WP7 programming, so to affect the future, I have to get my feature requests for the Windows Phone 7 Series development environment posted now!
· I want the legendary Microsoft tools for code editing, UI design, debugging, deployment, version control, add-ins, project management, etc. Please just let me install the “Windows Phone 7 Series SDK” and have Dev10 light up with new project and project item templates et al.
· I definitely want to be able to write C#. Since Charlie’s mentioned Silverlight, it seems like I’ll be able to do just that.
· I want to be able to mark a program as useful for background processing, e.g. I’m writing Pandora, and let that trigger a question for the user as to whether to allow it or not, ideally with a message like “Pandora would like to continue to run in the background using XX% of your battery. Is that OK?”
· For most apps that would like to appear as if they’re running in the background, I want to register a bit of code to run when its own cloud-based notifications comes in, e.g. an new IM or sports score.
· I want to be able to access data from built-in apps, e.g. contacts, appointments, etc.
· Obvious things:
o Notification when the user switches orientation
o Access to the compass, GPS, network, camera, mic, etc.
o Access to the network using TCP, HTTP, Atom, AtomPub and OData.
o Low and high-level access to gestures
o A nice set of build-in standard controls, including simple things like text box and more complicated things like map and route
o Integration with existing apps, e.g. the ability to launch the map app from my own app at a specific location or to a specific route.
o Ability to create custom controls/do custom drawing.
o Serialization so I can keep user data between sessions. Notifications when my app is being whacked.
o App-selected keyboards for specific tasks, e.g. entering a URL.
That doesn’t seem like a very big list. I must be missing something. : )