A few months ago I blogged about my plans to create a Windows Phone application based on my Family Tree Research hobby.

Well after a 5 month delay I finally submitted the first version of the application to the Windows Phone Marketplace today.  I have made a few changes since my initial Blog Post.  The most obvious change is that I added support for multiple GEDCOM files.  The reason for this change was mainly for performance reasons. 

My research database contains upwards of 1200 individuals, and downloading, parsing and serializing a file of 1200 records takes about 30 seconds so by supporting multiple files on the phone would allow my to split my research data into multiple smaller files.

I also spent some time adding some graphics, which I created from public domain images on the web.

Hopefully, I will hear in a few days whether my submission has been approved. 

When that that happens I will provide some detail on how the application can be used, to carry your family tree research with you.

Regular readers of this blog will realize that, in addition to my interest in .NET programming, I am also an amateur genealogist. 

Many times, over the last few years I have tried to combine the two – which is demonstrated by a codeplex project I created a couple of years ago.  However, work, family and my inability to stick to a plan have gotten in the way of completing something usable.

I recently obtained a new Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7 phone, and it occurred to me that a Family Tree Application would be an ideal fit for the phone platform.  After all, you may not have access to a laptop or desktop computer when you are delving through material in the basement of some archive.

Just before Christmas I downloaded the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools and the  Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Toolkit, and I started work on a simple Windows Phone 7 App – “My Family Tree Project”.

The goals of the first version of the App are quite simple.

• Be able to copy an existing GEDCOM File (the standard format for Genealogy data) onto the phone from a PC.
  
• Be able to view a list of Individuals in the file
  
• Be able to view the following detailed information on each individual
  • Family Name, Given Names and Sex
  • Spouse(s)
  • Parents
  • A list of children
  • A list of events for the individual (Birth, Census etc)
  • Notes
• Be able to navigate to individuals using the list view, and be able to navigate to related individuals when in the detail view

I have essentially finished most of these features although they still need some polish and more exhaustive testing (see below for screenshots taken from the Emulator)

Screenshots of “My Family Tree Project”

Welcome Screen	Settings Screen	Individuals List
Individual - Detail	Individual – Children	Individual – Events
Individual – Notes

This week my application for a  Windows Phone Marketplace account was approved – and my goal is to have the first version of “My Family Tree Project” available as a free download through the Marketplace by April.

Over the next few weeks – in future posts, I will highlight some of the challenges I faced on this project.

My Samsung Focus finally arrived a couple of weeks ago (see Windows Phone 7 – Where are you?), now I am just waiting for my Developer Registration to be approved so I can “Developer Unlock” the phone.

As a .NET developer the cool thing about the Windows Phone 7 platform is that it uses a programming paradigm that I am familiar with.  Regular applications for the phone are built in Silverlight while games are built with the XNA Framework, both of which are part of the .NET Framework.

I have downloaded the Windows Phone SDK and the Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Toolkit and I have started to experiment with the Silverlight side of the SDK. 

As I am still waiting for my Developer Registration to be approved I cannot directly use my phone to test and debug, but the included emulator is quite good (see right). 

Once my Developer Registration is approved I can list applications that I create in the Marketplace – the registration allows developers to list up to 5 free applications and an unlimited number of paid applications. 

I am not sure yet what I will be doing, but one thing I do know - I will be blogging about it as I go.