The Windows Phone Developer blog’s Larry Lieberman today offered up a great list of resources for Windows Phone “Mango”:
There are a very large set of resources being created on a weekly basis for Windows Phone developers. Since I’m the Product Manager at Microsoft responsible for Windows Phone Developer Educational Content, I thought I’d start a series of posts to highlight the ones I think are most interesting and useful. Today’s post is specifically about Mango developer resources.
Here they are:
- Official Windows Phone Developer documentation on the MSDN Library. This is where we publish all of our official documentation. Quite a bit of new content was added here concurrent with our release of the new SDK, including:
- What’s new in the Windows Phone SDK
- Code Samples for Windows Phone; includes 26 new samples just for Mango
- Our ‘How To’ index. This is where we link to all of the specific pages within the documentation that explicitly spell out ‘how to’ implement a specific type of developer scenario. Many of these actually map to and spell out the execution of the sample code in the code samples. Some of the most interesting How To documents for Mango features include:
- SL & XNA together: How to: Combine Silverlight and the XNA Framework in a Windows Phone Application
- Profiler: How to: Improve the Responsiveness of Your Application Using the Windows Phone Profiler
- Fast App Switching: How to: Preserve and Restore Application State
- Database: How to: Create a Basic Local Database Application for Windows Phone
- Sockets: How to: Create and Use a TCP Socket Client Application for Windows Phone
- Sockets: How to: Create and Use a UDP Socket Client Application for Windows Phone
- Camera: How to: Create a Base Camera Application for Windows Phone
- Camera: How to: Extend the Pictures Hub with App Connect for Windows Phone
- Audio: How to: Play Background Audio for Windows Phone
- Periodic Agent: How to: Implement Scheduled Tasks for Windows Phone
- Motion API: How to: Use the Combined Motion API for Windows Phone
- Search Extensibility: How to: Extend Search with App Connect for Windows Phone
- Tiles: How to: Create, Delete, and Update Tiles for Windows Phone
- Windows Phone Mango Training Course. Now updated for beta 2 of the SDK. The Windows Phone Mango Training course, (like our previous training course for the initial release of Windows Phone 7), provides you step by step guidance, with complete sample code, demonstrating how to leverage the new developer scenarios in Windows Phone Mango to create a variety of real world applications. For the new training course, we decided to have the various labs all revolve around a single, more useful application, a task manager we called ‘Tidy’. You can get a video introduction to the ‘Tidy’ application here on Channel 9.
- The Inside Windows Phone Show on Channel 9. This show is our home on Channel 9, where we’ll provide you video walkthroughs of our new developer features, on a periodic basis. So far, we’ve conducted a number on Mango functionality, including the following:
- App Hub Game Developer Resources, updated for Mango. This page is where we centralize all of our Windows Phone game developer resources, and we’ve updated it for Mango. Here you’ll find the following items, (among others):
This is but a small sample of the large set of resources we’ve currently got available. In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be releasing more items targeted at helping you leverage all of the fantastic new developer features in Mango.

Wow… I am in love, can’t wait for Mango to be released.
Random Mango question. I’ve decided to take the plunge and flash my phone with Mango. However, I noticed that the version of Mango that Microsoft provided is slightly different than the one that was previewed on the tech sites a while back. One of the things that really caught my eye was that turn-by-turn navigation is gone. It’s replaced by a tap-to-read feature, which isn’t as driver friendly as real turn-by-turn. Anyone (*cough* Paul *cough*) know if that ever coming back?
The developer build is the same one that bloggers and tech reviewers got earlier. I’m not sure what you mean.
Sorry, I was a bit mistaken. It looks like what I’m referring to was an even earlier build. Anyway, there’s a screenshot of what I’m talking about here: http://www.wpcentral.com/turn-by-turn-directions-voice-text-bing-audio-vision-all-coming-wp7-mango?utm_source=wpc&utm_medium=twitter
I know for a while the rumor was that true turn-by-turn navigation was in the works. That screen shot in the link above even makes it sound like the earlier builds had something like turn by turn (although admittedly, it doesn’t explicitly say that it’s turn-by-turn). What I was wondering was whether there was some sort of explanation as to why we were downgraded to a turn-by-tap style navigation?
I really was hope that this platform would compete with Android and iPhone, but 9 months in and I can’t get my Audible books and no good free turn by turn GPS. I give up I am getting another iPhone ( I had a 3G) or Android ( I had a Captivate). I had to used the Andriod when my HTC Surround was in for repair and I realize how much I missed my Audible books and GPS.