Top Tips for Building a Successful Windows Phone Application

1. Top Tips for Building a Successful Windows Phone Application Stefan Wick Principal Test Manager Microsoft Corporation

2. Other Resources Related MIX 2011 Sessions: • Application Performance (Jeff Wilcox) • Application Design (Megan Donahue) • Blend for Windows Phone (Unni Ravindranathan) MSDN Developer Guidance: Building a Windows Phone 7 Application from Start to Finish All demo sources will be available at: http://blogs.msdn.com/swick (my blog)

3. Session Objectives • This is the average rating for Marketplace apps: • You don’t want this to happen to your app: • After attending this and the other Windows Phone Track sessions at MIX, you should be able to get to this, and better:

4. AgendaTop 6 Tips for building successful apps • Navigation & Tombstone • Handling phone states • Memory usage • Testing your app • Certification checklist • Monitoring your app

5. Tip #1: Navigation &Tombstone Key Takeaways: Avoid transient pages Avoid circular navigation Apps need to serialize their state Demo

6. Tip #2: Handling Phone States Key Takeaways: Understand the various states Test on real device in real situations Demo

7. Tip #3: Memory Usage Key Takeaways: Use appropriate image assets Avoid object life time issues Demo

8. Tip #4: Testing Your App Key Takeaways: Consider some automated testing Monitor perf & memory metrics Demo

9. Tip #5: Certification Checklist7 things to check before you hit submit • No network, no problem? • < 90MB? • Theme aware? • Handles exceptions? • Back button works as expected? • User consent dialogs & settings? • Pauses/resumes user’s music?

10. “Fantastic app. Love it, I use it all the time!” “This looks like work in progress. Good idea, but not very useful in its current state.” “Crashes all the time. Useless.” Tip #6: Monitoring Your AppObtain feedback from your users

11. Tip #6: Monitoring Your AppCrash detection & email feedback • Simple solutions: • Add a “Send Feedback” button • Store crash data and ask user to email it • Or send it to your web server (with user’s consent)

12. Tip #6: Monitoring Your AppAnalytics frameworks • More Advanced Solution: • Provides detailed data on usage patterns • Helps decide where to invest and where to cut • Must consider perfand privacy concerns • Check out David Poeschl’s session about Analytics

13. SummaryTop 6 Tips for building successful apps • Navigation & Tombstone • Handling phone states • Memory usage • Testing your app • Certification checklist • Monitoring your app