Windows Phone + VB developers = Great Mobile Apps
11/29/2010 Update: Today we are announcing the final release of Visual Basic for Windows Phone Developer Tools. This release enables you to submit your VB applications to the Windows Phone Marketplace. Since the CTP, we’ve also added support for French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Like the CTP, the final release requires Visual Studio Professional, Premium, or Ultimate, and the Windows Phone Developer Tools. If you don’t have Visual Studio 2010, you can install the free Visual Studio 2010 trial. You can also find VB code samples for Windows Phone on MSDN here.
Happy coding!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Many of you have asked if Visual Basic can be used to write Windows Phone applications.
As of today, the answer is "yes!"
Starting today, you can download Microsoft Visual Basic CTP for Windows Phone Developer Tools. This is a great milestone as it enables our Visual Basic developers to be able to build applications for Windows Phone.
Applications built using the CTP run on both the emulator and the phone. To try the CTP, you'll need the final version of Windows Phone Developer Tools and Visual Studio 2010 Professional or higher. If you don't have Visual Studio 2010 Professional, you can install the free trial of Visual Studio Professional.
The CTP includes Visual Studio 2010 project templates, item templates, designer support, emulator support, debugging, and IntelliSense for Visual Basic. After installing the CTP, Visual Studio 2010 Professional and higher users will find Windows Phone project types for Visual Basic in the New Project Dialog, as you can see below.
Post your feedback and connect with others on the Windows Phone Forums, and report issues on Microsoft Connect.
Namaste!
Comments
Anonymous
September 22, 2010
What's so great about VB? Every time i have to read it my eyes hurt...Anonymous
September 23, 2010
Get your eyes checked then mate...Anonymous
September 23, 2010
Great news, thank you! @Dominik: I feel the same when I have to read C#Anonymous
September 25, 2010
Please, add Visual C++ for a future release...Anonymous
September 26, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 26, 2010
FarCry3r, you can use the free VS2010 Pro trial to use the CTP at no cost. There's a link in the text of the blog post. Polita Paulus MicrosoftAnonymous
September 26, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 04, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 07, 2010
Amen to not releasing a good dev tool brother ! When FoxPro for DOS was released we used to have to code @Say before there was a form builder. Microsoft has somehow managed to take coding all the way back to Early DOS programming standards now instead of writing @Say we are writing htmlhelper and developers are hailing this as a break through, give me a break. We should layout our forms and Visual Studio should generate the css, tables and divs for us. This product should be called Visual StoneAge. The sad part is it didn't take the FoxPro 8 years to get a form designer that works nor they require 2 different design patterns. The webform designer still can not render a web page correctly which is pathetic and MVC for the most part lacks one. Congratulations to the Visual Studio team for delivering such a wonderful product. What version of Visual Studio are you finally going to implement a class browser that does more then look good.Anonymous
October 12, 2010
Instead of wasting $500 million for a WP7 campaign you should rather have added support for native code. With support for native code MS wouldn't need to steal icons from the Apple App Store. www.zdnet.com/.../9917 But the good thing today is that we can just ignore MS with its 4% market share. No apps, no market share. No market share, no apps. Spending an other $500 million on marketing won't fix this. Development tools will.Anonymous
October 16, 2010
This to all the people who are stuck and frozen in history and refuse to move on: Get over it! Visual Studio 6 is history and worthless in current times. If you cannot, go build your memorials for it somewhere else. We are in 2010 and the tools that we need today cannot be understood by you if you refuse to learn and move on. Andre, the development tools for WP7 are world class and Apple has NOTHING close to this. Go and make Apple apps (if you can) and stop complaining in Microsoft blogs!Anonymous
October 18, 2010
The dev tools may be "world class", but all Microsoft has to offer are proprietary languages and frameworks. I'm not going to rewrite the whole codebase for a smartphone with 4% marketshare. Angry Birds for Android got 1 million downloads witin the fist day while MS has to steal the Angry Birds icon from iTunes because they have no intention to rewrite it for WP7. MS is living in an ivory tower and the world outside is changing. C++/CLI would help here, but someone thought that spending $500 millions on marketing is better than support for C++ codebases. I don't mind the Silverlight UI, but I won't write any non-UI code in a proprietary language.Anonymous
October 18, 2010
Also why is OpenGL not supported on WP7?Anonymous
October 18, 2010
@Andre - C# is a first class citizen in the .NET World. C++ is unfortunately unpopular in developing business and consumer applications in general. The fact that the Windows Phone 7 is a business and consumer device and is ideal for .NET development with Silverlight - C# comes as a natural choice. C++ is way too complicated for business-oriented developers. OpenGL? Are you kidding me?!! I think Microsoft got is spot on by choosing Silverlight and .net for Windows Phone development!Anonymous
October 18, 2010
@Andre - Again, if you want to do open source development, go with Andriod. Why even bother with Win Phone 7? Surely you see some potential with Microsoft to be interested... Microsoft's .NET platform is far superior and easier at the same time than open source alternatives like PHP, Python or even Java and is backed by solid development/design tools like Visual Studio and Expression.Anonymous
October 20, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
November 03, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
November 06, 2010
Hi Andrew, You can just call page1.textbox1.text from the button's handler. page1 is here is an object of the class Page1 and you'll have a reference to it if it's embedded inside Mainpage. If you want to navigate to Page1, you can use System.Windows.Navigation.NavigationService.Navigate(...). You can look at the DataboundApplication template - it has an example of a MainPage.xaml and a DetailsPage.xaml and shows how data is passed between pages.Anonymous
November 16, 2010
Hi, my VB.NET app is almost done and I want to publish it soon in the App Hub. When will the final tools be available or could I try to submit my app with the CTP tools compiled? Thank you!Anonymous
November 17, 2010
Hi Sven, The team is working on putting the finishing touches as we speak and we hope to deliver the final tools by the end of this year. -somasegarAnonymous
November 18, 2010
Hi Soma Thank you for your quick response! Can't wait to publish it :-) SvenAnonymous
November 21, 2010
Hi Soma - Thanks for the helpful information, and for continuing to reply to comments on this blog entry. I am a Visual Basic programmer who is excited about developing for Windows Phone. I don't like to install CTP or Beta or Release Candidate software on my main development machine. So I set up a virtual machine to use for playing around with this stuff. But I have had some problems with things not working in my virtual environment. SO, I am anxious to install the [final versions of the] phone devl tools in my main environment. Right now I have Visual Studio 2010 Pro and Expression Studio 4 installed. I think the next step would be to install the final version of the Windows Phone Devl Tools - will this change at all when the final version of the Visual Basic add-on is released? Then, I assume I will install the final version of the Visual Basic add-on. Finally, I will install SP1 for Microsoft Blend 4. Do you see anything wrong with my proposed order of installing tools? I am worried that the final version of the Visual Basic Tools for WinPhone will be released but I won't realize that it is out. I assume that you will announce the release via a new Blog entry. Is that the first place that I should expect to see the anouncement? Or is there a better site to be checking regularly for news on this release? Finally, if you have any more detailed info about when to expect the final version of Visual Basic Tools for WinPhone to be available, I would love to hear that. Thanks a ton, Jeremy EllisAnonymous
November 22, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
November 22, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
December 01, 2010
Please answer this question (just yes or no): Is it true that you must pay MS $99 every year to be entitled to run your own (created by yourself) apps on your own phone?Anonymous
December 02, 2010
Ark-kun: Yes, you must be a registered Windows Phone developer to load applications for testing onto your developer-unlocked phone. Windows Phone developer registration costs $99/year or is free for students that are members of the DreamSpark program. Once registered, developers are able to unlock your phone and to publish applications to the Windows Phone Marketplace. We do this to help ensure the integrity of Windows Phone Marketplace and the customer experience, so that developers and customers alike are assured that only quality tested apps and games are broadly available. Polita Paulus MicrosoftAnonymous
December 03, 2010
@phuff >Once registered, developers are able to unlock your phone and to publish applications to the Windows Phone Marketplace. We do this to help ensure the integrity of Windows Phone Marketplace and the customer experience, so that developers and customers alike are assured that only quality tested apps and games are broadly available. That's not what I was talking about, isn't it? Publishing app to the Marketplace is one thing and deploing it on my own phone is another thing entirely. Your answer didn't show any evidence that debugging my own app on my own phone can hurt Windows Phone Marketplace... BTW no business will ever use the Windows Phone Marketplace for their private apps that emploees use.Anonymous
December 11, 2010
Clearly, Microsoft haven't thought this thing through! There are probably other retired folk like me that want to build simple apps just for our own use, with no thought of, or interest in, making them available to others. You expect me to pay US$99 per year out of my pension just for the privilege of indulging my programming hobby? Is students can have free access, why can't we hobby programmers also?Anonymous
December 27, 2010
@Lisa Feigenbaum When are the Blend 4 templates for WP7 development going to be available? Is there a reliable timetable? You wrote, this will be a task for a future version of the dev tools. This sounds as if it will take a long time. Is that so? I am quite disappointed about the missing VB templates for Blend.Anonymous
December 29, 2010
Martin: Blend 4 support for VB projects on Windows Phone 7 is coming in the next service pack of Blend. We don't have details to share on the Blend service pack release date at this time. Polita Paulus MicrosoftAnonymous
March 21, 2011
Are there any news on when the Expression Blend VB templates for WP7 developemnt are going to be released?Anonymous
March 24, 2011
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 24, 2013
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 24, 2013
i will be cool if microsoft makes a vb clasiic for windows phone!! total sucessAnonymous
May 07, 2015
can I put the final app. im my phon (has an icon and name)?