Windows Phone 7 includes comprehensive web browsing capabilities. In addition, ASP.NET allows you to detect the client device type making a request so that you can provide the content in a format and style appropriate to the device. For information about how Windows Phone 7 supports web browsing, and how to maximize your application experiences on Windows Phone 7, see Designing Web Sites for Phone Browsers (a PDF document) available from the Microsoft Download
Center (http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713253).
For information about mobile device support in ASP.NET, see “ASP.NET for Mobiles” on the Microsoft ASP.NET website
(http://www.asp.net/mobile/) and “Walkthrough: Adding Support for Devices” on MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wa642f6e(VS.71).aspx).
Mobile phone applications aimed at the enterprise and for consumer use will usually require access to remote services to be able to obtain information, exchange data, or synchronize content. Typically, on the Microsoft platform, you will implement these services using the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) technology that is part of the .NET Framework. For information about WCF, see “Windows Communication Foundation” on MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.
com/en-us/netframework/aa663324.aspx).
A common approach for delivering data or exposing services to mobile devices such as Windows Phone 7 is by using the Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural style for the service. For information about REST-based services, see “REST in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)” on MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/cc950529.aspx) and “An Introduction To RESTful Services With WCF” in MSDN Magazine (http://msdn.microsoft.
com/en-us/magazine/dd315413.aspx). For a definition of the way that REST-based services work, see “Canonical REST Entity Service” on the Microsoft .NET website (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/cannonicalRESTEntity).
In other cases, such as exchanging small volumes of data between the client and server or calling specific methods on the server, you may decide to use SOAP instead. For more information about WCF, see “Getting Started with WCF” on MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ee354180.aspx).