Windows Phone Love & .NET Ramblings

This is the Day #4 post in the article series “7 Deadly Sins for Windows Phone Developers!“.

What is Wrath ?

From http://deadlysins.com:

Wrath is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury.

Why: You’re wired for it. Also, the people around you are pretty damn irritating.

How does Wrath relate to Windows Phone development ?

– uncontrolled rage as developer ..

So, you have decided to spend one of your precious free weekends to code up your dream Windows Phone app. You start, but soon find yourself needing fancy controls, animations or some peculiar tweak. Result – anger. To rub it in, you heard a buddy just made a similar app on a competing platform & is now making buckets of money. *&!@#$%^^& .. right? Well, let’s chill. There are plenty of ways we can help ourselves by taking a look around & not reinventing the wheel. So, let’s see how you, a Windows Phone developer, can avoid Wrath.

• Toolkits: Think you need a special control for your Windows Phone app? Some custom animation for your pages? STOP & look around! There is plenty of help to prevent you from reinventing the wheel. Some awesome toolkits to choose from for your developer arsenal are the Windows Phone Silverlight Toolkit, Coding4Fun Windows Phone Toolkit, Sterling DB, GZipWebClient & many others.
• 3rd Party Tooling: Quite a few MSFT partners are making the Windows Phone ecosystem richer by adding a lot of love for developers. These are mostly in the form of custom controls/animations/frames which really make your life a lot easier. Check out Windows Phone specific offerings from Telerik, ComponentOne & Infragistics.
• Trials & Pricing: Price your work sensibly. If you have spent a lot of effort & think you have a genuinely good app, you absolutely should not give it away for free. Trial mode is a great way to give users a taste of what’s to come & hold back a few features when they actually buy your app. Read both sides of the story here and here .. bottom-line, do what makes sense for your app.
• Monetization: Along the same lines, if you want to make a free app, there absolutely nothing wrong in putting a few advertisements to earn you a few bucks. Yes, ads are annoying; but users will easily overlook the ads if your content stands out. MSFT’s PubCenter Ad Control is a part of the Windows Phone Mango SDK .. adding it to your apps is as easy as dragging a control & registering your app for ad categories. Another great option is AdDuplex - an ad exchange network where you promote other apps & help fellow Windows Phone developers. If you are picky about Ad revenues & low eCPMs, specially in newer Markets, consider using the Windows Phone AdRotator – a single control that fetches Ads from multiple providers for better utilization of your Ad space.
• Stay Tuned-in: Mad at yourself for missing out on some latest marketing offer or Windows Phone developer sweepstake? This is a very happening ecosystem & it helps being as plugged-in as possible. Can you spare an hour every week? Do yourself a favor & listen to Windows Phone Dev Podcast for all that’s latest & greatest for Windows Phone users/developers.
• Just Ask: Stuck late into the night with a roadblock while coding your Windows Phone app? If you have exhausted your own resources, simply ask. Chances are someone else also faced the same quirky problem and there is a way around or there is an awesome open source project to help you out. And the Windows Phone developer community is among the very best you shall get .. we help each other out. So, hit up your fellow Windows Phone devs on StackOverflow or Twitter or some other forum. You’ll be surprised by how far collaboration can get us.

So, next time we get mad, let’s take a step back & evaluate our options. The koolaid isn’t all that bad . Pick up some fancy controls & make your dream app .. and then make some money! Hopefully, you come back tomorrow for the Day #5 article in this series of “7 Deadly Sins for Windows Phone Developers!“.

Adios!

This is the Day #2 post in the article series “7 Deadly Sins for Windows Phone Developers!“.

What is Envy ?

From http://deadlysins.com:

Envy is the desire for others’ traits, status, abilities, or situation.

Why: Because other people are so much luckier, smarter, more attractive, and better than you.

How does Envy relate to Windows Phone development ?

– jealousy, feelings of deprivation ..

Are you jealous of other successful Windows Phone App developers? Think you/your app isn’t getting the attention it deserves? Well, you may not be alone; and there’s definitely something we can do about it. Here are few ways Windows Phone developers can get around Envy:

• Opportunity: Remember, we all started the same with the new Windows Phone ecosystem & you have equal opportunity compared to other app developers on the platform. And it is still a newer Marketplace; so if you write something really cool & follow it up right, you will shine!
• ISV: Individual Software Vendor. That is what Microsoft calls us individual developers who produce Windows Phone apps for the Marketplace. Did you notice the word Vendor? Yes, it started with the Apple store; but still pretty exciting to have an immediate consumer base across the world for your code. Accordingly, a Vendor outlook needs to developed, where we are answerable to our users. We need to support & nurture our user/consumer base through detailed appropriate communication, visibility, regular updates etc.
• Is your App discoverable? : Your million-dollar idea had a spark when it first launched; but is it discoverable now amidst hundreds of similar apps? Steps need to be taken to continually make our app discoverable in the Marketplace. Releasing to newly open Marketplaces, Search keywords, social buzz .. anything helps.
• App Connect: Did you know your app could be featured in the user’s Bing searches for tight integration? This, is called Search Extensibility or App Connect and in my opinion, a great way to showcase your app & keep bringing your users back into the app. More info & code samples here & here.
• Marketing: So, you spent a lot of late-nights coding up your dream app & just published to the Marketplace. Wait, you’re job is not done. Careful marketing will get you spikes of app downloads at the beginning & persistent numbers as your features/user base grows. Talk about your app to anyone who would listen. Get in touch with the MSFT User Community (@usercommunity) to make sure your apps are showcased.
• Brand: Your app has greater chance of a loyal user base if users see your app as a brand and it is up to you to position your app accordingly. Start by making Twitter/Facebook profiles for your app, to give yourself an official channel to communicate with your users. Heck, make a website for your app for immediate brand recognition through screenshots/feature highlights. This WP7 App Site template on Codeplex is a great way to start.
• App Reviews: If you think your app is nice & polished and you want an immediate burst of users, don’t be shy to reach out to WP7 sites like http://www.wpcentral.com/ or http://wmpoweruser.com/. App reviews by these heavily-followed sites will give your app immediate recognition & downloads.
• Promotions: Once in a while, MSFT or partners may run campaigns like this or this. Make sure you don’t miss these golden chances, as featured apps in the Marketplace skyrocket in downloads.

That’s all I got for today. So, let’s put our Envy aside and do everything we can to get our Windows Phone apps the recognition they deserve. And it takes one tap from the user to uninstall .. so let’s continue doing all that we can to keep our app a first-class citizen on users’ phones. Hopefully, you come back tomorrow for the Day #3 article in this series of “7 Deadly Sins for Windows Phone Developers!“.

Adios!

This is the Day #1 post in the article series “7 Deadly Sins for Windows Phone Developers!“.

What is Pride ?

From http://deadlysins.com:

Pride is excessive belief in one’s own abilities, that interferes with the individual’s recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.

Why: Well-meaning elementary school teachers told you to “believe in yourself.”

How does Pride relate to Windows Phone development ?

– Overconfidence, failure to acknowledge, boasting ..

Many of us swear & stand by our code with confidence. While that’s not a bad thing, let’s not be a victim of overconfidence in writing a solid Windows Phone apps & then continue delivering updates without breaking functionality. Here are few ways Pride can come in the way of Windows Phone developers, preventing us from delivering a quality product to our users:

• OverConfidence in MarketPlace submissions: Check, check & check again on Application Certification Requirements before being trigger-happy on submitting your hard work to the Marketplace.
• Did you know about the Marketplace Toolkit?: Run checks locally & submit to Marketplace with confidence. A full article detailing use of Marketplace Toolkit is here.
• Not using Emulator Tools: Windows Phone Mango SDK brought along several enhancements to the Emulator VM that allows for better testing locally. Make sure to use them if they fit your app; a great article about Emulator Tools can be found here.
• Why are you not using Beta testers?: Also new, is the way to publish your app to a closed group for testing/feedback before final release. This could be greatly beneficial in flushing out bugs & issues, if you have a trusted group of testers; more details about Beta Testing can be found here.
• Unit Test before shipping: This is specially true as you ship updates to your app; it is important to start building a battery of Unit tests to make sure core functionality is intact. The Silverlight Unit Test Framework bits (details here) should help.
• Device + Mom Testing: Your pride in how well the code runs in the Windows Phone emulator should not be a replacement for on-device testing, which is critical before any Marketplace submission. Physical devices often have quirks that expose edge conditions; additionally you get to see for a couple of days how your app feels in your palms. It is a great practice to have the emulator & device in contrasting theme/accent color for thorough testing. Also, a lot of users of your app may be non-techies, who may have different expectations on UX than we developers do. So, make sure you have your Mom or some non-developers test your app for feedback.
• Use the Isolated Storage Explorer: Need to see how your app behaves as files/folders change in your Isolated Storage over time? Make sure to utilize the handy Isolated Storage Explorer to test out conditions of change in the isolated storage; details of usage here.
• Being Aware of common certification/UX glitches:

  — Back Navigation
  — App Exit
  — Requisite Artwork
  — No-connectivity mode
  — Improper App activation coming out of Tombstoning
  — Declarations/User Permissions for using Location/Push Notification services
  — Non-Metro look & feel (great resource here)

That’s it for not allowing “Pride” to step in the way of being an awesome Windows Phone developer. Probably lot more to add; but need for brevity & my thought process are calling it quits for the day. Hopefully, you come back tomorrow for the Day #2 article in this series of “7 Deadly Sins for Windows Phone Developers!“.

Adios!

December 19, 2011. It’s Holiday Party time at the Central Ohio Windows Phone User Group (http://cowpug.org/). With BBQ food, custom shirts & cakes, it’s time to celebrate the first 6 months of our user group – a wonderful group of passionate Windows Phone developers.

However, despite the Holiday spirit, it is our single monthly meetup .. so something productive was called for before we started the good times. Just for kicks, I did a 30 minute talk titled “7 Deadly Sins for Windows Phone Developers!”. Nope, nothing religious or biblical about it . This was a short talk built by simply drawing pointers from past Windows Phone development experiences .. some common sense Do’s & Dont’s. I believe it was well-received or may be the folks at COWPUG are way too lenient with me. Anyways, I had some fun mapping the 7 Deadly Sins to what we developers should stay away from while developing for the Windows Phone ecosystem. Accordingly, I thought it might be a curious exercise to take the 7 slides for each of the “cardinal sins” for WPDevs and make a short article series out of it.

So, here goes. This post is the introduction to the series & will serve as the indexed home for the article series posts. Today, we begin with what the 7 Deadly Sins are. During each of the next 7 days, you’ll see a post each day which takes one sin & translates it to some no-no’s for Windows Phone developers. I might make a few pointed comments, which I hope you would not take personally .. I am in violation of several principles we will talk about in my own Apps, which I am trying to fix. This is barely an attempt to summarize some best practices & great tools at our disposal as Windows Phone developers. These posts would not have any code to show; rather tons to links to point you to awesome resources. Would really appreciate if you point out resources I may be missing out.

So, what are the 7 Deadly Sins ?

From Wiki:

The 7 Deadly Sins, also known as the Capital Vices or Cardinal Sins, is a classification of objectionable vices that have been used since early Christian times to educate and instruct followers concerning fallen humanity’s tendency to sin. The currently recognized version of the sins are usually given as pride, envy, sloth, wrath, greed, gluttony and lust.

In each of the next seven posts, we will pick up one of these cardinal sins & see how it relates to Windows Phone Development:

Again, at the end of the series, all posts would be indexed here. Hope this would be a fun exercise. Thank you very much for reading.

Adios!

[Roadsign Courtesy: http://salary.com/]