Windows Phone Developer Tools (WPDT) update is here

The new update of the WPDT is here, allowing developers to use the updated assemblies that will be released in the upcoming Windows Phone OS update from Microsoft (the release code named “NoDo”).

The good news is, all apps in the market are supposed to work without recompiling them to this new release. And all apps being developed with this February release of the tools should also work on all phones, even those not upgraded later on with the new patch(“NoDo”).

New Windows Phone Developer Tools contents

New in the latest update of the WPDT is:

The Windows Phone Capability Detection Tool – This tool discovers what resources your app is using, just like the tools used by Microsoft does in the app certification process. This tool will be appreciated by many, as there have been quite a few apps that have been rejected on the fact that the app code used more resources than were stated by the developers in the app manifests. And in those cases it was often due to mere misunderstanding about how the API’s worked, and not the app developers trying to state something else than what their apps actually did.

The Windows Phone Connect Tool – Rejoice! Now you, the developer, can connect to your phone and debug your applications without having the Zune software running. Although you have to start Zune, and then close it after your phone connects to it, before you launch this tool it seems…

An update of the Bing Silverlight control – All the information says is:

Includes improvements to gesture performance when using Bing™ Maps Silverlight® Control.

But exactly what this entails seem hard to find out. I’d guess it’s the scrolling and zooming performance that has been tweaked.

Windows Phone Developer Resources Update – Apparently there is a text selection bug in Pivot and Panorama controls that can make the user shift pane when trying to copy text, this update will fix it if you open your app with the new tools installed and recompile it.

Windows Phone Emulator Update – And finally, the WP Emulator update. This will enable you to use copy and paste on the emulator. And it’s not mentioned, but I do hope the other updates stated to hit devices in the “NoDo” update are in here as well.

Third party apps restrictions to copy and paste

I know a lot of developers are going to be frustrated here, but from the documentation it seems only a few controls available to third party app developers will support copy and paste. The short list reads:

• System.Windows.Controls.TextBox
• System.Windows.Controls.PasswordBox
• And text input fields in the Microsoft.Phone.Controls.WebBrowser

The links

You need to get both the new WPDT as well as the Visual Studio update.

Get the Windows Phone Developer Tools.

Get the update for Visual Studio.

Read more about the full functionality coming in NoDo in the Windows Phone 7 updates post!