Microsoft this week launched a novel new app development tool aimed primarily at first-time programmers. The tool, called Windows Phone App Studio, is a free, web-based platform for developing Windows Phone apps, and gives practically anyone with access to a modern browser the ability to create fully functional, if limited, apps which can be shared locally or published to the Windows Phone Store.
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We’ve heard from many potential Windows Phone developers who have great ideas, but who might not have the coding skills to create an app using standard development tools. Sometimes it’s a first-time developer with a small-scale idea for an app; other times it’s an accomplished developer who wants to frame up a concept before committing dev time. We heard you, and today we’re releasing a beta version of a new app development tool, Windows Phone App Studio, that can help you create your app without coding.
Using templates, users select a broad category from which to start, including menus for restaurants, a movie review service, a fitness and personal training app, or an online mobile shopping cart. There’s also the option to start from a scratch with an empty template.
Users can then modify a template’s menus, color, and navigation layout and add blocks of content such as images, videos, live Twitter updates, and RSS lists. It’s one of the easiest ways to create a functioning app on any platform, and users need no programming experience at all.
This does of course mean that apps created with this service will be relatively simple and similar in design. Users with a bit of coding skills can make their app stand out by opening the final App Studio project in more advanced editors such as Visual Studio to add more features and further tweak the design.
Once an app is final, users can upload it to their own Windows Phone devices for free, or register for a Dev Center account in order to publish it to the Windows Phone Store. That latter option requires a paid membership but Microsoft is currently running a summer sale and offering yearly Dev Center registrations for $19 through August 26.
