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Alex Wilhelm
Alex Wilhelm is a San Francisco-based writer. You can find Alex on Twitter, and on Facebook. You can reach Alex via email at [email protected] Alex Wilhelm is a San Francisco-based writer. You can find Alex on Twitter, and on Facebook. You can reach Alex via email at [email protected]
Today, some how, has devolved into a Windows Phone day. Who expected that? Anyway, Microsoft has released version 7.1.1 of its Windows Phone SDK. The upgrade contains two critical changes: support for building apps that function on handsets that contain only 256 megabytes of RAM, and support for building apps on Windows 8.
Language support was also smoothed in the update, along with the Microsoft Advertising SDK. This update is turning heads as its previous iteration, 7.1, did not function on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. For enthusiastic developers who had to the new OS migrated early, this was a problem.
Microsoft, however, has not solved every issue. The company warns in their post that some problems remain for Windows Phone development on the fresh Consumer Preview:
- Running the WPSDK 7.1.1 on Windows 8 works, but it is not officially supported until the RTM release of Windows
- You are likely to see a performance degradation in the emulator if you have Hyper-V enabled
That is Microsoft saying ‘if it doesn’t work, bugger off.’ Still, most of the issues that we outlined in our previous coverage have been sorted. Just to refresh you, this is what was broken before: “the XNA Game Studio is a pain to install, requiring a work around; Windows 8 can’t run the Windows Phone emulator; .NET 3.5 needs to be installed by itself, or it has issues. The emulator issue is the largest problem of the three.” Now, development is possible, if slightly buggy.
Alright, back to your regularly scheduled programming. Get it?
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