Windows Phone Developer Tools Are Final

Any developer writing apps for Windows Phone 7 has to use the final tools and here they are. Some notes from Brandon Watson:

• This release is English only, but we will be releasing the French, Italian, German and Spanish language versions in the next couple of weeks.
• you can expect it to take about five days to pass or fail certification
• apps are confirmed for: Twitter, Netflix, OpenTable, Flixter and Travelocity
• Panorama and pivot controls are included
• Bing Maps control was added to the final release of the tools
• While not included in the Windows Phone Developer Tools, another control you’ll want to know about is provided by the Microsoft Advertising team. There are developers who want to sell their apps, some who want them to be free, and even more still who will want to put ads inside of their apps. The Mobile Advertising SDK is available today making is very easy for developers to generate ad revenues from their apps. The team has also released the first real-time, bid-based mobile ad exchange, allowing for revenue maximization of ad placements when they are served. Raj Kapoor has a great post talking about this release.
• we are separately releasing the Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit.. The GestureListener provides developers with a control to handle the full range of gesture events, including Tap, DoubleTap, Hold, Drag, Flick and Pinch. There is also a DatePicker and TimePicker to make it easier and more uniform to get dates and times from customers, and they will localize automatically to the correct date and time format setting. The other controls are ContextMenu, WrapPanel and ToggleSwitch. You can download the controls, and get more information, at the Silverlight Codeplex site.

OK, let’s see those apps now!