Windows Phone 7 Sample App - PGA Golf Leaderboad

I wrote this app over the weekend to play with Windows Phone 7 API. I took a JSON feed from PGA Tour Web site and parsed it with JSON.Net. I used the Silverlight MVVM Light, from Galasoft which is the simplest MVVM I've found.

Good Stuff:
1. The WP7 API is simple, if you already know Silverlight or WPF you can build app in a short time
2. It's great the tools are available so far in advance, thank you MS and @Wp7Dev team!
3. The MVVM Light project is great to keep your code maintainable and Blendable
4. The JSON.Net project is a must have feature in the WP7 API
5. It's fun to play with WP7 code!

Bad Stuff:
1. The phone emulator is slow, and prone to can stall, I hope @WP7Dev look at optimising this issue.
2. The fonts are not very sharp, I'm guessing this is the old SL3 problem. It could be just an issue with my emulator. Are the WP7Dev team on this, will this get fixed on the real phone??? Will the Phone get SL4 support before launch!
3. The emulator has not feedback when things go wrong with the rendering of binds, I'd like to something like Mole in the emulator (give us the same Visualization features as Firebug/Web Developer toolbar in Firefox), maybe I should use Blend more ;((((
4. Designing in raw XAML is painful, Visual Studio 2010 has made improvements, but the reality is if you're going to make commercial apps for WP7, then you'll need to use both VS2010 and Blend.
5. The bulk of my work was mapping JSON data to C# classes, this is messy stuff even with JSON.Net. It's a shame the Phone API is not on C# 4.0, the DynamicObject would have cut the project time in half.

What's Next?
I'm not a designer, and that shows in the sample screens, sorry! If you are a Blend designer and have some free time then perhaps we can hook up and make some real commercial apps for the WP7 release. If your a designer that needs a developer then let me know in the comments.

My plan is to write some location-based social games for the phone. I need the Silverlight Bing Maps Control for WP7, not just the BingMapsTask. I still need to be convince these "Tasks" are a good idea, once you start a Task you App could get die, since the apps are not running in the background.

BTW, I'm trialing a WP7 training course, if you want to fast track your WP7 development. Check the course details: http://discoverlabs.net

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• @WP7Dev
• Windows Phone 7
• wp7dev

[brad1825]

This app is awesome, where can I get it?

[missl06]

Too small controls and list items

[aspiziri]

@MrGamerDE The emulator is part of the developer tools. It's how you test your appliction...

[MrGamerDE]

lol

Windows Phone 7 Emulator?? xD

[gruby360]

Great job!