Charles Petzold has just released a draft preview of his MSPress eBook called “Programming Windows Phone 7 Series” for public download.

The chapters offered in the free download of the book are:

Part I   Getting Started

• Chapter 1   Phone Hardware + Your Software
• Chapter 2   Hello, Windows Phone

Part II   Silverlight

• Chapter 3   Code and XAML
• Chapter 4   Presentation and Layout

Part III   XNA

• Chapter 5   Principles of Movement
• Chapter 6   Textures and Sprites

I hope that this will help add some more advanced functionality to my first Windows Phone 7 application (see video below).

Download the book from Microsoft Press : Free ebook: Programming Windows Phone 7 Series (DRAFT Preview)

Source: WMPoweruser.com

Here is good video showing how the application market place is used on Windows Phone 7. It show some really nice transistions between screens and how you add a application to your home screen. Also interesting to note is the the “Contoso” options on the Market Place home screen which could be how enterprises and carriers could distribute applications.

Couple of good videos from Pocknow.com from the GDC about gaming on Windows Phone 7.

People at WMPoweruser.com have just posted some video’s about the gaming experience on Windows Phone 7.

Source: More GDC Windows Phone 7 info

Windows Phone 7 series email client Outlook seems to be getting a fairly major upgrade as it will now supoprt pinch to zoom and HTML email viewing support. This will make the email viewing experience much more rich of business users wanting to view images embeded in emails and riched HTML layouts.

Source: Pocket Now GDC: Outlook Mobile Annoyances Remedied in Windows Phone 7

Microsoft seems to be betting that screen technology in the next few years will be migrating to AMOLED technology. This is why the new Windows Phone 7 Series device sport a very black looking UI as AMOLED screen use less power showing black thus better battery life. This power advantage comes from the screen not using as much power when displaying black areas of the screen. Kinda the same way a light bulb uses less powere when it is off…

However it seems that Office users users will not enjoy this battery life savings as the email display be default had a white background. This is presumably due to the improved readability of back on a white background as opposed to white on a black background.

Source: Pocknow.com GDC: Microsoft is Betting on AMOLED Screen Display on Windows Phone 7 Series