Windows Phone – Toolkits, Controls and Add-Ons, Oh My!!!

Watch this space…. very cool stuff coming all the time!!!

The Basics:

You will need these free tools to get started, if you don’t have the tools, the link below will get you on your way to installing all the tools you will need to get going, for FREE:

Windows Phone Development FREE Tools

Free Toolkits

Add a lot more style and functionality to your Windows Phone Apps with not a lot of work by adding one ore more of these free Toolkits to your arsenal!!!

If you know of a great toolkit that we should share or that I have missed, leave a comment and I will be sure to include it!

Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit

get it here:

Silverlight Toolkit Download

Author:  SaiedKhanahmadi

Includes:

• • GestureService/GestureListener
  • ContextMenu
  • DatePicker
  • TimePicker
  • ToggleSwitch
  • WrapPanel

PhoneyTools

get it here:

http://phoney.codeplex.com/

or on NuGet!!!

Author: Shawn Wildermuth (http://wildermuth.com/)

Offers some great extension to the basic Toolkit provided by Microsoft.

Includes:

• Controls
  • FadingMessage class
  • SelectSwitch Control
  • SimpleLongListSelector Control

• Other Classes
  • BitlyHelper class
  • GravatarHelper class
  • InstaPaperHelper class
  • PhoneLogger class
  • ObservableObject class
  • Phone Resources classes
  • Converters
  • GameTimer class
  • MicrophoneRecorder class
  • SoundEffectPlayer class
  • PhoneNetworking class
  • MD5Managed class

Coding4Fun Tools

A very extensive set of tools for your phone development projects!

get it here:

http://coding4fun.codeplex.com/

or on NuGet!!!

Includes:

Controls:

• • About Prompt
  • Input Prompt
  • Progress Overlay
  • Round Button
  • Round Toggle Button
  • Memory Counter
  • Message Prompt
  • Password Prompt
  • TimeSpan Picker
  • Toast Prompt

Abstract Classes:

• • PopUp class for things like an Input Prompt that can be GPU accelerated unlike the built in Popup control.

Converters:

• • Boolean to Visibility
  • String To Visibility
  • Themed Image Converter
  • Inversed Theme Image Converter
  • Visibility to Boolean

Binding Helpers:

• • Textbox update
    Example: <TextBox Text=”{Binding FooBar, Mode=TwoWay}” local:TextBoxBinding.UpdateSourceOnChange=”True” />

Data Helpers:

• • PhoneHelper for getting data out of the WMAppManifest file
    Example:  PhoneHelper.GetAppAttribute(“Title”)

Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 is designed to make it easier for you to build mobile applications that leverage cloud services running in Windows Azure.  The toolkit includes Visual Studio project templates for Windows Phone 7 and Windows Azure, class libraries optimized for use on the phone, sample applications, and documentation.

Get it here:

http://watoolkitwp7.codeplex.com/

Open Data Protocol (OData) Library for Windows Phone

This is an open source release of the .NET, Silverlight, and Windows Phone 7 client libraries for the Open Data Protocol (OData). For more information on OData, see http://www.odata.org.

Get it here:

http://odata.codeplex.com/