Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

Over at the Windows Phone Developer Blog, Joe Marini has posted some information regarding the key goals for IE9 in the Mango update. As previously discussed, IE9 will bring HTML5 compatibility, hardware accelearation, better CSS compliance, and many other great browser features. Most importantly, the Windows Phone team is looking for feedback on IE9. Hit the link and share you ideas/requested features with the team.

The accelerometer is one of the many input devices available to modern smartphone developers. In their latest blog post, the Windows Phone Developer Blog discusses using the accelerometer API to detect and utilize shake gestures. According to them, the API for the accelerometer is great, but there is no specific information on recognizing shake gestures. So, if you are a developer and looking to implement this type of functionality into your app, hit the link for some code and explanations.

The Windows Phone Developer Blog continues its coverage of WP7 signature components. This time they have published a great explanation of the pivot and panorama view controls. They also provide Photoshop templates to help in the design of your own app. Follow the link for the great introduction and links to the templates.

The Windows Phone Marketplace team is getting ready for launch. In anticipation of that exciting event they have revamped the developer portal in order to make it easier to distribute and manage games and apps. These changes coincide with a new set of policies and timelines for rolling out Marketplace for developers. Initially, two thousand developers will be chosen from the initial registered developers. Chosen developers will receive guidance and early access to the application submission and certification process. Windows Phone Marketplace will become fully available to developers in November. Most importantly for developers is that the first payday will come in February. All of this is really exciting and suggests that the app selection will be robust at launch.