Dan Soltesz -blog .NET geek in disguise

I recently created my first wp7 app http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/3ca7bb09-7710-4114-bb97-62d2657c7e95.  I did something simple just to see what it took to build an app and go through the market place app submission process.  I spent about a week creating this app.  That includes setting up a dev machine, creating database and admin app to manage data, web services that the phone can talk to and then building of the actual app.  This app was built using MVVM design pattern and this MVVM Framework I mentioned in this post http://www.dansoltesz.com/post/2011/11/14/Windows-Phone-7-MVVM-Framework.aspx

While this app is simple in nature, it uses several core features that any app would need.  It handles proper tombstoning, page navigation with nice transitions, communicates with external services, uses ad control with location services, context menu support, application button and menu databinding,splash startup screen, proper error handling and reporting, background services and live tile updates and several windows phone 7 tasks for emailing and sharing.

In order to have my app ready for the submission process, I used the new windows phone 7 market place test kit that was available with the mango sdk.  This proved priceless in helping to identify any potential issues before submitting the app to the market place.  The biggest issue I ran into is having a fast startup time.  Per the certification process your app has to have the main page visible within 5 seconds.  This seems pretty easy to do but when your initializing viewmodels, databinding UI, using Panorama view which supports multiple UI's, checking data connections and connection to services, 5 seconds goes by pretty quick.  My first test was well over 5 seconds so I started doing some refactoring, added in splash screen that enabled my real main page to get loaded properly and when all was said an done, the app launches ina  few seconds on average.

Please check out the app and let me know of any issues or improvements and if you would like any details of anything, just ask.