Windows Phone 7 Series – Developer Tools CTP Released

Today at MIX 10, MIcrosoft announced details of its development story for Windows Phone 7 Series.  While it has been known since Mobile World Congress in February that Silverlight and XNA form the core of the development platform, no information had been released about the toolchain itself.

The toolchain is composed of:

Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP
Windows Phone Emulator CTP
Silverlight for Windows Phone CTP
XNA 4.0 Game Studio CTP
Expression Blend 4 Beta
Expression Blend Add-In Preview for Windows Phone
Expression Blend SDK Preview for Windows Phone

You need to download only four things:

1) Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (contains the first four items in the list)

2) Expression Blend 4

3)  Microsoft Expression Blend Add-in Preview for Windows Phone

4) Microsoft Expression Blend SDK Preview for Windows Phone

Additional resources:

Windows Phone Developer Portal(includes links for documentation, developer guides, and code samples)

Silverlight for Windows Phone (includes links to a support forum for Silverlight for Windows Phone, documentation, and getting started videos)

Also check out this excerpt from a forthcoming Charles Petzold book and some learning material on Channel 9

Download the tools, read the dev guides, and dive in!