[Bill Badger]

I found this thread whilst searching google for Windows Phone 8 training. I totally agree with the author!

I've been digging into WP8 development for the past month, and boy what a headache it's been. I'm a C# programmer, and have used WPF and XAML, but nothing has been more of a headache than attempting to develop Windows Phone 8 applications!

As the author said, the learning resources are poor. No books, no training. I've managed to get by, by learning Windows 8 development ... but it's NOT the same. Even such simple issues as using a WrapPanel on WP8 caused me hours of searching before I even found the answer was to install the Windows Toolkit! I'm currently having a headache with Triggers in WP8 ... finally learn't they can't be used as they can in Windows 8.

It's a headache to get any results from Google. When you search for anything related to Windows Phone 8 you get results for "Windows 8" ... which isn't the same. It takes hours to find an answer to such a simple issue that could have been documented by Microsoft.

The Microsoft Virtual Academy is good, but I've went through the WP8 course and it doesn't go into much great detail.

I'm tempted to step back for a while and wait until the learning resources are available. I have to agree with the OP's thread title though.

Hi

There are a few books becoming available end of April and May 2013 which look good, but Plurasight added a new training video a few days ago which looks good too.
Introduction to Windows Phone 8 - Online Training Course for .NET Developers.

Best regards

[78Bytes]

As a C# developer that currently has 2 WP7 apps and 1 WP8 app I would say that they are pretty similar to develop for in most cases. If you are aware of the additional features that WP8 offers then you can find documentation on MSDN that will help you implement that feature into your WP8 app. A good book on Windows Phone 7.5 (aka Mango) such as this book should get you heading in the right direction. Although the underlying kernel for WP8 is different than WP7 the API has stayed pretty much the same. Most of my answers I found were on MSDN. If you have any questions I would be glad to help. Also please read the design documentation at https://dev.windowsphone.com it will help you understand a lot of the concepts in Windows Phone to make the development process a bit easier.

[drg]

How similar is Windows Phone 7 development to Windows Phone 8 development? Are there any radical changes or "gotchas" to watch out for? I was tempted to buy a good book on WP7 but I'm worried it'll be a waste of time.

P.S. I've just realized I've registered under my girlfriends Facebook account! Arrrgh. Need to create a new account.

Hi "Tasha" :)

WP7 and WP8 as said above is pretty much the same. WP8 has the new api's for the new features that WP7 doesn't have, e.g. lenses, nfc, wide tile (although that's now in the 7.8 sdk) etc etc.

I recommend you build a WP7 app first because that will work on WP7 and WP8. I didn't read any books, just downloaded the SDK and went for it, searching the net on how to do things. You'll find stackoverflow a very useful site. By the sounds of it you may not have a WP, so I'd recommend you use one for a little and get to know how the OS works and what kind of features it has. Then when you go to develop your app, when you design a specific feature just bing or google it and you'll find the code.

Some good sites I've found are www.geekchamp.com/ and 31 Days of Windows Phone 7 Blankenblog

I've been through a couple WP7 books and have found the same info on net without any hassles. Some people prefer to go through books but I just wanted to dig my teeth into it, so whenever I wanted my app to perform a function, I found the answer on the net and worked it out from there.

RE other posts to do with C# and VB. I have been programming for 10 years, mainly Oracle PLSQL and very little java. PLSQL is procedural so very different to C#. The little bit of java I did, did give me a little tiny head start on C# but I've found C# very easy as to pick up and would recommend you go down this path.