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This article is compatible with the latest version of Silverlight for Windows Phone 7.

This is part 4 from the article series on Windows Phone 7.

Windows Phone 7 Part #1: Getting Started 
Windows Phone 7 Part #2: Your first app 
Windows Phone 7 Part #3: Understanding navigation
Windows Phone 7 Part #4: The application lifecycle 
Windows Phone 7 Part #5: Panorama and Pivot controls 
Windows Phone 7 Part #6: Advanced interaction
Windows Phone 7 Part #7: Understanding Push Notifications
Windows Phone 7 Part #8: Using Sensors

In the previous three numbers of the series we have gone through a series of arguments that finally have let us to start building applications for the phone. We have spoken about the most basics arguments about the creation of a project and the initial phases of the program, then we started to enlarge our scope and we focused on the page, then we have open again the scope and we spoken about the problem of having multiple pages. Now, it is time to consider the application we write as part of a more wide system and watching at what it happen when our software runs on the phone and is become one of the many apps used by the final user.

This article is compatible with the latest version of Silverlight for Windows Phone 7.

This is part 3 from the article series on Windows Phone 7.

Windows Phone 7 Part #1: Getting Started 
Windows Phone 7 Part #2: Your first app 
Windows Phone 7 Part #3: Understanding navigation
Windows Phone 7 Part #4: The application lifecycle
Windows Phone 7 Part #5: Panorama and Pivot controls
Windows Phone 7 Part #6: Advanced interaction
Windows Phone 7 Part #7: Understanding Push Notifications
Windows Phone 7 Part #8: Using Sensors

Coming from the previous part, the second, where I discussed multiple aspects of the page in Windows Phone and the "Metro" theme, now it is time to make another step on our path. Just in the first article of the series, when I was introducing the differences between Silverlight for desktop and for the phone, I said that differently from the desktop version when you write for your device the applications are always navigation apps. This simply sentence means you have always to deal with a paradigm that makes your software more like a web application instead of a traditional application made of multiple Forms and modal and non-modal popups.

Recently I had some time to play with the new Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools CTP. I have created a sample application (called „geoGallery”), you can watch the demo video and download the code. It’s a Gallery application, but to give it a little twist, it gets the pictures from Google Picasa based on your location!

Download source code

Now I’m going to guide you through the code, focusing on the Phone specific features, methods and problems I experienced.