Presentation: Dialing Up with F# and Windows Phone 7

A big thanks to Onorio for having me speak for the MIGang FSharp Special Interest Group tonight.

The slides that accompanied this presentation are shown below (use the mouse or the left and right arrow keys to navigate the slides):



Additionally, these slides and the associated examples can be found on my GitHub at https://github.com/dmohl/DialingUpWithFSharpAndWP7_Presentation.

WP7 AccelerometerProxy in F#

With the release of the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK RC, there is now an easy way to use the emulator to simulate sensor data (such as data from the accelerometer). Unfortunately, I'm doing WP7 development in a VM and haven't yet had any luck getting the new SDK functionality to work in that environment.

I am however able to run the emulator using the WP7 Developer Tools RTW, but of course that version did not include functionality to simulate sensor data. There are a couple of options that people have identified for simulating accelerometer data (see Example using a mouse, Example using a Wiimote, Example using external app). For my needs, I decided to go with the mouse-driven approach.

While I could have easily used the C# library from the previously mentioned example, I decided instead to port that example to F#. The result is show here:


You can find the full example at https://github.com/dmohl/FsWP7Accelerometer.

Version 1.3.0.1 of the F# and C# Win Phone App (Silverlight) Project Template Released

Version 1.3.0.1 of the basic WP7 project template has been released. The core feature of this release is a new item template that allows you to add a F# Source File in WP7 projects. Prior to this release, attempting to add a new item through the standard process resulted only in options targeting C#.

To take advantage of this new feature, do the following:

1. Install the 1.3.0.1 version of the project template (see this blog post for more information).
2. Right click on the F# project and select Add -> New Item...
3. The resulting window will now include a F# Source File item as shown below:

C# WP7 Panorama with Caliburn.Micro Template

In my last post, I announced a F# and C# WP7 Panorama with Caliburn.Micro template. That template generated some interest in having a similar C# only template. You can find the C# only version on Visual Studio Gallery or through the Online Templates feature of Visual Studio 2010.

Here are the steps:

1. Download and install the RTW release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools.
2. In Visual Studio 2010, navigate to File -> New and select Online Templates.
3. Search for "Daniel Mohl" or "C# WP7 with Caliburn.Micro":

The full source is available at http://github.com/dmohl/CSharpWP7PanoramaWithCaliburnMicro.

F#, Caliburn.Micro, and a New WP7 Template

Ever since I first heard about Caliburn.Micro, I have wanted to build an F# template that used it. With

the new WP7 panorama C# template that was included in the RTW release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools, I found a good opportunity. 

For those who haven't heard, Caliburn.Micro is a lightweight, feature packed MVVM framework. Rob Eisenberg (@eisenbergeffect) has done a fantastic job in developing this framework which consists of a "~50k assembly that builds for WP7, SL4, and WPF4" (Caliburn.Micro Introduced). While the assembly is small, the feature set is impressively large. Features include: ActionMessages, action and binding conventions, event aggregator, view locator, bootstrapper, logging, and much more. There are also a handful of features specific to WP7, not the least of which is the handling of tombstoning. To put it simply, Caliburn.Micro helps you code the "right way" while making everything easier along the way.

You can find the new F# WP7 Panorama template on Visual Studio Gallery or through the Online Templates feature of Visual Studio 2010.
Here are the steps:
(Note: Visual Studio 2010 Professional (or above) is required to use these templates.)

1. Download and install the RTW release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools.
2. In Visual Studio 2010, navigate to File -> New and select Online Templates.
3. Search for "Daniel Mohl" or "F# and C# Win Phone Panorama":

As with all of the templates that have been announced on this blog, you can find the full source on github.

Version 1.1 of the F# Windows Phone 7 Templates

The two F# Windows Phone 7 templates (F# and C# Win Phone App (Silverlight) and F# and C# Win Phone List App(Silverlight)) have been updated to support Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW.

F# Windows Phone 7 (Silverlight) Templates Now On Visual Studio Gallery

Over the last few days, I've been working to put together a few Visual Studio 2010 Online Templates to help kick start development of Windows Phone 7 (WP7) applications in F#. These templates are now available on Visual Studio Gallery.

Follow these steps to get started:
(Note: Visual Studio 2010 Professional (or above) is required to use these templates.)

1. Download and install the Windows Phone Developer Tools.

2. In Visual Studio 2010, navigate to File -> New and select Online Templates.

3. Search for "Daniel Mohl" or "F# and C# Win Phone" (a sample is below):

Note: The WP7 FSharp.Core.dll has been included as part of these templates. It is also part of the Microsoft F# August 2010 CTP.

As always, I'd love to hear your feedback on these templates as well as ideas for others that you would like to see.