The Coding4Fun Tools for Windows Phone 7 has a new version, 1.2, that includes some new controls.

One of them I was very excited to see was the Toast Prompt control.

http://coding4fun.codeplex.com/

You can read a great overview of the control here.

WP7 Toast Prompt in depth

Project Description
WP7 Isolated Storage Explorer is a tool designed to help developers and testers interact with the isolated storage file for Silverlight Windows Phone 7 applications.
The explorer can work both as a desktop application for testers or integrated in Visual Studio for developers.
Whenever a WP7 application/project involves storing data locally the the device, it will be to the isolated storage file. A common difficulty is accessing the data for testing or rapidly restoring the application's data/state after the isolated storage has been reset, usually during the testing and development life-cycle.
One of the usual workarounds has been to add code to handle data transfers (to a WCF service or a remote Web Service) or just hard code test data, but this takes a lot of time and migrating the code from one project to another can take significant effort.
To help solve these issues and facilitate faster development for a WP7 application, the WP7 Isolated Storage Explorer includes the following features designed to make your life easier:

• Easy installer. One simple setup file that sets everything up on a development or testing machine.
• Easy integration. Add a single reference to your project and one line of code and you're done.
• Display the isolated storage file from multiple applications at the same time.
• Desktop client that handles all the common operations. The client handles operations such as bidirectional file transfer, creating folders, deleting files and folders and can perform parallel operations on multiple remote applications
• The same intuitive client integrated in Visual Studio. Developers can debug and check the data in the isolated storage file without leaving the IDE.
• Works in the background so your phone application will not be interrupted by operations. The explorer has been tested to handle invalid operations gracefully and to not interfere with the application's purpose.

You can learn more about the Metro design language and it’s history below:

The Windows Phone Developer Blog: From Transportation to Pixels

• Clean, Light, Open and Fast
• Alive in Motion
• Celebrate Typography
• Content, Not Chrome
• Authentically Digital

Here’s a question I was able to get answered on Stack Overflow:

How can I open the Marketplace from web site being shown in the Windows Phone 7 browser app?

On the desktop you tend to use the following:

http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=3cc99ca6-f0e6-df11-a844-00237de2db9e

On the device you should use the following:

zune://navigate/?appID=3cc99ca6-f0e6-df11-a844-00237de2db9e

NOTE: the zune: option works on the desktop as well.

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
-- Isaac Newton

Mobile UI Patterns is a great site that feature great mobile UI patterns from some of the best mobile apps out there.

You should definitely check this one out. See below for the kind of things featured.

• Splash Screens
• Activity Feeds
• User Profiles
• Education Walk Throughs
• Check-in Screens
• Notifications
• Comment Detail
• UI that I Heart
• Lists

Windows Phone Development QuickStarts

New to Windows Phone development:The QuickStarts are presented in a prescribed order for those of you who want to start at the beginning and learn step-by-step. Think of the QuickStarts as the chapters of a book.

Have experience, but want to learn about specific features/scenarios: Although the QuickStarts are presented in a prescribed order for beginners, each QuickStart is a self-contained introduction to a feature rather than a dependent component of a larger whole. In other words, feel free to skip around to different QuickStarts.

• Getting Started & Fundamentals (10 articles)
• Visuals and Media (5 articles)
• Working with Data (4 articles)
• Sensors and Other Phone-Specific Features (4 articles)

Microsoft has created a set of three starter kits for Windows Phone 7.

	Translator Starter Kit This program provides the user with the ability to enter a word or phrase in one language and have it translated to another language. The starter kit demonstrates how to call a web service, use an XNA Framework API from within a Silverlight application to play a sound, maintain a history list in isolated storage, and animate an image in a ToggleButton.   For more information, see Translator Starter Kit. Download Starter Kit
	Level Starter Kit This program provides the user with the ability to use their phone as a level. The starter kit demonstrates how to make your application's color scheme match the user's theme choice, how to make your Silverlight application interact realistically with the accelerometer of the phone, and how to customize phone orientation sensing. For more information, see Level Starter Kit for Windows Phone. Download Starter Kit
	Unit Converter Starter Kit This program provides the user with the ability to convert values from one unit of measure to another. The starter kit demonstrates how to apply the Model-View–ViewModel design pattern in creating your Windows Phone 7 application, how to optimize your application start up, and how to create a context sensitive menu. For more information, see Unit Converter Starter Kit. Download Sample

Here’s the master list of all the Windows Phone 7 developer tips so far!

• WP7 Dev Tip #001: How to take screenshots of your Windows Phone 7 apps
• WP7 Dev Tip #002: How do you create Windows Phone 7 panorama application screenshots?
• WP7 Dev Tip #003: Windows Phone 7 Design Templates
• WP7 Dev Tip #004: Application.Current.Host.Settings
• WP7 Dev Tip #005: Windows Phone 7 Emulator Keyboard Shortcuts
• WP7 Dev Tip #006: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit
• WP7 Dev Tip #007: Coding4Fun Windows Phone Toolkit
• WP7 Dev Tip #008: Windows Phone 7 Developer Training Kit
• WP7 Dev Tip #009: Windows Phone 7 Silverlight ZXing Barcode Scanning Library
• WP7 Dev Tip #010: patterns & practices - Windows Phone 7 Developer Guide
• WP7 Dev Tip #011: The WP7 Lifecycle
• WP7 Dev Tip #012: OnEnter Behavior
• WP7 Dev Tip #013: Charles Petzold’s Programming Windows Phone 7 eBook for FREE
• WP7 Dev Tip #014: Using merged resource dictionaries with Windows Phone 7
• WP7 Dev Tip #015: Professional Windows Phone 7 Application Development
• WP7 Dev Tip #016: Incredibly Useful Value Converters
• WP7 Dev Tip #017: What to do if you get FrameworkDispatcher.Update has not been called exception when recording audio in WP7
• WP7 Dev Tip #018: How to record audio in Windows Phone 7
• WP7 Dev Tip #019: Resco MobileForms Toolkit 2011 Volume 2
• WP7 Dev Tip #020: The Noun Project
• WP7 Dev Tip #021: Windows Phone Developer Tools January Update
• WP7 Dev Tip #022: Developers can now purchase Windows Phone 7 Devices without Carrier Contracts
• WP7 Dev Tip #023: Online Demo for Telerik RadControls for Windows Phone
• WP7 Dev Tip #024: Windows Phone 7 Facebook integration

Everywhere you look you see social networking these days. And Facebook is leading the way. That’s why it is very common to hear developers saying I need to integrate Facebook with my application.

Well now it’s possible to integrate Facebook with Windows Phone 7 applications.

There is a great article on http://dotnetslackers.com/ that shows the way.

• wFace – windows phone 7 Facebook integration part 1
• wFace – windows phone 7 Facebook integration part 2
• wp7Gesicht – windows phone 7 Facebook integration part 3