Last week was a busy week for the Windows Phone Team: not only did we celebrate the launch of Windows Phone across Europe, we also released the Windows Phone Developer Tools October 2010 Update. The update, available here on the Microsoft Download Center, provides:
· an updated Bing Maps Control that improves map performance during user gestures
· the Capability Detection tool, which scans your application and reports on detected phone capabilities which will be applied during ingestion to marketplace.
· the WP Connect utility, which enables creating a connection between the Phone and your PC without require Zune to be running, enabling debugging of media APIs.
More information on the Capability Detection tool is here on MSDN, and details on the WP Connect Utility are here on MSDN. The update requires that you have the Windows Phone Developer Tools installed and that language/locale of the update and developer tools match. If you haven’t yet installed the developer tools or created a developer account, head on over the AppHub at http://create.msdn.com for everything you need to start building Windows Phone apps. Windows Phone 7 is finally here and there are some great apps appearing in the app store—you’re not going to want to sit this one out!
Happy coding!—The Windows Phone Developer Tools Team