Windows Phone 7 'Mango' Apps Now Accepted for Certification by Microsoft -- Visual Studio Magazine

Windows Phone 7 'Mango' Apps Now Accepted for Certification by Microsoft

By Keith Ward
08/23/2011

Microsoft has cleared perhaps the last hurdle in its race to release "Mango", the first major update for Windows Phone 7, by announcing it is now accepting app submissions.

Microsoft's Todd Brix stated in a blog post that as of Aug. 23, Mango apps were being accepted by the App Hub. Mango is Microsoft's much-anticipated upgrade of WP7, adding features like "fast app switching, background audio, multiple and double sided Live Tiles, better Search integration," according to Brix.

Brix also sought to tamp down some of the expectations that the official Mango release is imminent. "Sorry, not quite yet" he pre-emptively answered those who assume that accepting Mango apps means that Mango is coming to end-user phones in the immediate future.

That wasn't the only WP7-related news coming out of the blog, as Brix announced the availability of the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Release Candidate. Just two languages are supported with this version of the SDK: English and Japanese. The SDK, Microsoft stated, is compatible with Visual Studio 2010 SP1.

One aspect of the SDK sure to please developers is the inclusion of the Marketplace Test Kit. The Kit allows developers to test their apps on their local machines, using the exact same requirements Microsoft uses to certify apps in the App Hub. "This should dramatically improve your chances at passing cert the first time," Brix said.

Also included in the bursting-at-the-seams SDK is the Microsoft Advertising SDK for Windows Phone. This is aimed at developers wanting to monetize their apps through advertising channels. The posting said to expect the final version of the SDK by the end of September.

Although Brix stated that Mango release isn't imminent, the announcements today would seem to be a strong indication that it's coming very soon. Mango, initially announced in May, was released to manufacturing on July 26. Other much-anticipated features of Mango include app multi-tasking and visual voicemail.

About the Author

Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Virtualization & Cloud Review. Follow him on Twitter @VirtReviewKeith.

Printable Format

comments powered by Disqus

Featured

Compare New GitHub Copilot Free Plan for Visual Studio/VS Code to Paid Plans

The free plan restricts the number of completions, chat requests and access to AI models, being suitable for occasional users and small projects.
Diving Deep into .NET MAUI

Ever since someone figured out that fiddling bits results in source code, developers have sought one codebase for all types of apps on all platforms, with Microsoft's latest attempt to further that effort being .NET MAUI.
Copilot AI Boosts Abound in New VS Code v1.96

Microsoft improved on its new "Copilot Edit" functionality in the latest release of Visual Studio Code, v1.96, its open-source based code editor that has become the most popular in the world according to many surveys.
AdaBoost Regression Using C#

Dr. James McCaffrey from Microsoft Research presents a complete end-to-end demonstration of the AdaBoost.R2 algorithm for regression problems (where the goal is to predict a single numeric value). The implementation follows the original source research paper closely, so you can use it as a guide for customization for specific scenarios.
Versioning and Documenting ASP.NET Core Services

Building an API with ASP.NET Core is only half the job. If your API is going to live more than one release cycle, you're going to need to version it. If you have other people building clients for it, you're going to need to document it.