Dev Center

Marketplace Dashboard for Windows Phone 8 on sale for limited time

By George Ponder, Sunday, May 5, 2013 at 6:11 pm

Marketplace Dashboard for Windows Phone 8 is an app designed to help developers keep track of the apps and games they have in the Windows Phone Store. The app gives you a view of your apps including crash count, submission status and download counts.

Marketplace Dashboard has main pages that will list your published works and a page for those apps/games still in the certification process. The paid, version of Marketplace Dashboard, which is currently on sale, allows each app to be pinned to your Start Screen that will display app stats.

Use two-step authentication? The Microsoft Developer Center app now works again!

Developers

By Rich Edmonds, Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 3:51 pm

We've covered Microsoft's push into the realm of two-step authentication quite extensively as the company continues to roll changes out and patch up broken areas of its backend. This includes the Dev Center app for Windows Phone, which caused issues for those who desired to utilise the app after upgrading their account to be more secure. Microsoft has now reported that it has fixed the problem.

App updates getting stuck in approval process, Microsoft looking into the problem

Developers

By Rich Edmonds, Tuesday, Mar 19, 2013 at 11:14 am

There's nothing worse for developers than updating their Windows Phone apps to address bugs and for the release to get lost wondering around the vast plains of the Microsoft Dev Center. Our own Jay Bennett has experienced an issue with the latest version of the Windows Phone Central app finding itself stuck in limbo (or rather "Certification Passed" and "Not Submitted" stages of approval).

Microsoft has since acknowledged the issue and has stated engineers are looking into reports.

Monitor your apps better with Microsoft's Dev Center App

By George Ponder, Monday, Feb 25, 2013 at 10:23 am

Dev Center is a Windows Phone app from Microsoft designed to give Windows Phone developers a better handle on their app's performances.

While all the performance data is available through Microsoft's Windows Phone Dev Center website, Dev Center app puts all that information on your Windows Phone, allowing developers to track the real world performance of their apps while on the go.

Microsoft refreshes Dev Center for Windows Phone 8

By Rich Edmonds, Friday, Nov 2, 2012 at 5:57 pm

Amidst all the announcement and unveilings, Microsoft has also taken the time to refresh the Windows Phone Developer Center with the release of Windows Phone 8. The Dev Center is the developer's HQ when it comes to Windows Phone development, deployment and support.

Microsoft updates Dev Center with many fixes, adds translation feature

Developers

By Daniel Rubino, Friday, Sep 28, 2012 at 4:34 pm

The Microsoft Dev Center has been a thorny issue for many developers lately with some app submissions having been held up for weeks, odd rejections and slow propagation of updates. While we can’t attest to whether or not those have all been fixed, Microsoft has evidently been rolling out many tweaks to make it better.

Microsoft details ongoing Marketplace errors for some Windows Phone users

By Daniel Rubino, Tuesday, Aug 14, 2012 at 9:44 pm

Explained: A familiar error message for some Windows Phone users

Ever since WhatsApp was pulled and then re-released this past weekend, we have had a small deluge in complaints from users that they cannot install the update. Instead, they are greeted with the above error message, resulting in user frustration. What’s more, uninstalling the app, resetting the phone and dancing around in a circle did not fix the problem either.

We’ve been trying to figure out exactly why some users have the problem while others, including ourselves, do not. Just as interestingly, we wanted to know which apps were exhibiting the error.

Microsoft has now detailed the problem on the Windows Phone Blog and there’s good news and some bad news. The good news is they acknowledge that there is an issue and they even know what is causing it. As it turns out, there are some problems with certificates for new apps published in the Marketplace within the last week.

Windows Phone Dev Center now automatically encrypts all apps to prevent piracy

Developers

By Rich Edmonds, Friday, Aug 10, 2012 at 7:10 pm

Software piracy is a serious battle, which can also affect our beloved platform developers. Microsoft has taken action by automatically applying encryption to all apps through the newly unveiled Dev Center. According to a detailed post on the Windows Phone Developer Blog, Todd Brix states that all apps (including those already submitted) are automatically encrypted without user input.

We first heard about the possibility of server-side encryption back in November, 2011. From our understanding, Microsoft was waiting until everyone was on Mango to implement that feature and it now looks to have happened. If you recall, at the end of April Microsoft decreed that you had to have Windows Phone 7.5 to get to the Marketplace. Combined with the Dev Center refresh, we think that transition for encryption is now complete.

Microsoft to rebrand the Marketplace as Windows Phone Store?

Rumors

By Rich Edmonds, Tuesday, Aug 7, 2012 at 4:25 pm

You'll soon be purchasing apps from the Store

In the recent announcement of Microsoft launching the new Developer Center for the Windows Phone community, the company has also revealed a potential rebranding of the Windows Phone Marketplace. This is an expected move, which we'll rate as a strong possibility. The Windows 8 Store is present in the next version of Microsoft's desktop operating system, so to remain consistent it makes sense to bring in a new name.

App Hub retired – meet the new Windows Phone Dev Center

By robert brand, Tuesday, Aug 7, 2012 at 5:21 am

Microsoft today has announced the replacement for the App Hub dev portal. It's said to have been months in the making and having the underpinnings of a more robust and scalable backend the site is available to use now.

Among new feature highlights, the new website includes support of PayPal to pay for your developer account as well as be paid from the Marketplace. You are also now able to choose unique prices for each region as well as conduct far bigger beta tests encompassing thousands of testers if needed.