Diagnostics & Developer Experience on Windows Phone

Ashwin KamathManish Kumar Gupta

vNEXT Mobile monthly eventJune 12th 2012, Tableau Software, Seattle, WA

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2012/06/05/windows-phone-reaches-the-100000-application-milestone/

Mobile App Market Trivia

• What time did the top 3 platforms each take to reach 100K apps?

• What are the top 3 categories of apps?• What’s the % of free apps in Windows Phone?• What are the top 3 languages the apps are

localized to on Windows Phone?

http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/news/item/14960_100000_apps_published_to_Windo.php

Platform specific app development tools

iOS Android Windows Phone

XCode + Instruments

Runs on Mac

Eclipse + Android SDK (DDMS)

Runs on Windows & Mac and Linux

Visual Studio 2010 Express for Phone

OR

Visual Studio 2010 Professional + Phone Tools add-in

Runs on Windows

IDE features & emulator

• Visual Studio Express Tools for WP7• What’s Mango? (OS, runtime)• VS Express 7.1.1• Emulator features• Designer – Expression Blend• VS Pro users and Phone app-in• Multi-targeting – v7.0 and v7.1

Debugging

• Debug Mode, Release Mode• Debug on Emulator, Debug on Device• ‘Tomb-stoning’ and debugging• Tips:– Keep the emulator running– Debug on ‘Debug mode’

• Integrated deployment to emulator & device[Note: First time device usage requires developer registration and ‘dev-unlocking’ the phone]

Profiling

• Why should you worry about perf?• Designing your app for better performance– Know your user’s RAM capacity– Choose the right APIs, data structures, Controls– Profile frequently and validate results– Profile apps on device and in Release mode. Why?– WP7 Performance Considerations: A MUST-READ!

Ready to Submit to Marketplace?

• Use Marketplace Test Toolkit• Tips and Tricks to ensure your app is not

rejected• ‘Capabilities’. Use only the modules you need

(you cannot fake capabilities)• Is your app Free? Trial + Paid? Only Paid?• Will your app have Ads?– Advertising Control and Advertising SDK

AppHub / Marketplace

• Submission Process• Download Reports• Payout / ad revenue reports (Pub Center)

Crash Reports and Analysis

• Default crash reports – stack traces, crash count

• 3rd party crash reporting systems– BugSense– HockeyApp– Telerik– Crittercism

Web and Cross-Platform Apps

• Web apps for Windows Phone: – HTML5 + Javascript + jQuery– ASP.NET MVC 4 & Mobile Development– See May 2012 MSDN Magazine topics

• Phone Gap• Appcelerator (Titanium)

Very Useful Resources for Diagnostics

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff967560(v=VS.92).aspx • http

://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2012/03/26/wpsdk-711-now-available.aspx

• http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2012/04/03/optimize-startup-time.aspx

• http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2012/03/07/optimizing-apps-for-lower-cost-devices.aspx

• http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Wiki/Best_practice_tips_for_delivering_apps_to_Windows_Phone_with_256_MB

• http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Wiki/Techniques_for_memory_analysis_of_Windows_Phone_apps

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsmobile/video/hh237494• http://

windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2012/02/01/memory-profiling-for-application-performance.aspx

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh202942(v=vs.92).aspx – background agents overview

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh394039(v=vs.92).aspx – background audio

Let’s go build (or port) some apps!

THANK YOU!