Over the last two weeks, I went through all the articles of my "XNA for Silverlight Developers" series and made sure that they are still valid in the context of the upcoming "Mango" Update for Windows Phone 7. Since a lot of the content is XNA specific, many articles didn't require huge changes. However, some of them also cover platform specific topics like the sensor APIs (which are a bit refactored in Mango) or the application life cycle (which has been extended by the new dormant state). Those articles required adding a few paragraphs or even rewriting parts of them completely, to provide smooth explanations that fit both the RTM and Mango versions of the platform. So, if you ever felt like learning XNA on the Windows Phone, you can now do that and feel certain that you are receiving all the latest, future-proof information with these articles. Happy programming! :)

Edit (2011-07-31): Woops, I just realized that I accidentally forget to make this post public. The original upload date was July 15th.

When I was working on my article series about how to prepare for the Windows Phone 7 certification exam 70-599 over at Silverlight Show (you can find the series here), I was eager to take that exam myself. Originally I had planned to take the beta exam, but missed the timeframe when it was available, so I had to wait until the official release date, which was planned for July 14th.

On July 11th I visited the Prometric website to check something different for a client and realized that the Windows Phone exam was available for scheduling already, so I spontaneously picked the first possible date to attempt it myself, which was July 12th. If you follow me on Twitter you may know already that I passed the exam that day, which of course made me very happy :). This morning the corresponding entry showed up on my MCP site.

For me, equally important as passing the exam was to see whether my preparation articles really are useful to people who want to prepare for this certification, and if they cover everything that is required. Well, if you have ever taken one of Microsoft's certification exams and are familiar with the regulations, you know that you are not allowed to talk about any of the exam content or modalities, so I'm obviously not going into any details here; however, it's safe to say that yes, these articles are a good guideline for everybody who wants to take this exam. You can use it to double-check whether you have enough experience in all required areas, and to brush up your knowledge on those parts that you have only barely dealt with or feel insecure about.

So I hope that this contribution to the community will be a continued help and actually encourages devs to get an official validation of their knowledge by taking this exam!

This is the last part of my article series to prepare you for Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 exam which will be available starting July 14th. For a short introduction and overview of the exam as well as a list of general learning materials please take a look at the first article.

The official outline of the measured skills breaks down the topics into the following parts:

• Designing Data Access Strategies (19%) (this article)
• Designing and Implementing Notification Strategies (17%)
• Working with Platform APIs, Tasks, and Choosers (21%)
• Designing the Application Architecture (21%)
• Designing the User Interface and User Experience (23%) (this article)

The last article was about the general application architecture and hence dealt with topics like the application life cycle and tuning for performance and certification requirements. This last part focuses on the user interface and user experience on the phone, from best practices in programming to recommendations and requirements for creating a consistent and convenient experience in your software.

You can find the full article on Silverlight Show.