Today marks the official release of Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango”.  Around lunchtime, the status on the “Where’s My Update?” page for most carriers was switched to “Delivering Update”.  Although I didn’t receive an OTA notification that an update was available, I got home and plugged my phone in and the Zune software immediately came up with the Update screen. Since I am in the developer program, my phone, a Samsung Focus, was registered and had the beta build (7712) of Mango installed on it.  Many wondered how this was going to work for developers running the beta code, and whether they would have to use their backups to return to “NoDo” before applying the the update. The good news was the first update I received was the actual Mango update building the code to the RTM level of 7720.  I then received a second update which cleaned up “beta stuff”. …

Several months ago, I wrote a post on creating an add-on for Internet Explorer using Add-in Express. I’ll preface this with Office and Internet Explorer both provide the capabilities to build extensions or add-ins that enhance the product experience or add functionality that might be missing from the product.  The process of creating these snap-ins can be extremely challenging since most require that they are coded in a language like C++.  Although it is possible to create them with managed code in C# or Visual Basic, they require a “wrapper” which provides the basis for the snap-in to interop with the application, a difficult and arduous process. That’s where Add-in Express for Office and .NET comes in. Whether your preferred language is C# or Visual Basic, Add-in Express enables a developer to waste less time on the wrapper and more time on the actual add-in.  Personally, if I had to…