Glossary - Windows Phone Development For People In a Hurry

.cproj File: The file for a Project written in C#
.dll File: The extension for shared libraries on Windows. They are not executable on their own but often programs are compiled as a .dll and run in a shell program such as svchost.exe or taskhost.exe for Windows Services
.NET: (a.) a huge class library that accompanies C# and VB, (b.) the runtime is the virtual machine that runs compiled C#/VB code, (c.) the name for the C#/VB development platform as a whole
.sln File: The file for a Solution
.vbproj File: The file for a Project written in VB
.xap File: The final built file which is deployed to the phone. Is actually a .zip file. Rename to .zip and open to explore contents.

Activated: An activated app is brought back to the foreground from either a deactivated or tombstoned state. See App Lifecycle for People in a hurry for more details
App.xaml: The base XAML page of the project where application-wide XAML resources are kept
AppManifest.xml: File containing a list of extra files included in the deployed Windows Phone app
Attribute (C#): Attributes are some metadata about a class, property or method. An attribute is specified in square brackets on the line before the class, property or method declaration
Attribute (XAML): Attributes are a general property of XML markup which specifies further information about an XML element e.g. <TextBlock Text="Some text here" Visibility="Collapsed" /> , here the XAML element TextBlock has defined the attributes Visibility and Text .

Binding: A way to to get a XAML attribute to mirror a C#/VB object property or another XAML attribute. For more details see Binding for people in a hurry
Boxing/Unboxing: When a method parameter is object and is then cast back to its true type inside the method. See C# for People in a Hurry

C#: The principal .NET language, broadly similar in style to C++ and Java
Closed: When an app is exited entirely. Starting a closed app will launch an entirely fresh instance. See App Lifecycle for People in a Hurry
Code-behind file: The C#/VB file that is automatically created with each XAML phone page file. It contains the C#/VB class definition for the phone page
Control: Microsoft speak for a widget e.g. a Button, TextBox or Image
Converter class: A class that implements the IValueConverter interface . Used to convert values between a XAML attribute and a bound object property

Data Context (binding): Bound attributes in XAML only refer to a property name, the data context determines what object these property names refer to. See Binding for People in a Hurry
Data Context (ORM): DataContext is the class for the Linq-To-SQL ORM in Windows Phone. This class caches object that are sent to the database to minimise the amount of slow read/write operations to the database. See Linq-To-SQL for People in a Hurry
Data Source: A generic term for a source of data e.g. a web service, a database, XML files etc.
Deactivated: The app is deactivated when interrupted by e.g. a phone call or when using the Home button. All the state is preserved automatically until tombstoned . See App Lifecycle for People in a Hurry
Delegate: A method pointer, i.e. a variable that can be set to a method. Used, for example, if you want to pass a method into another method

Entity References: EntityRef and EntitySet are generic types for loading single referenced object and collections of referenced object respectively. Used in Linq-To-SQL, they represent database relations from a database. They mostly aid with the operation of the ORM (i.e. keeping track of changes) and also delay loading until explicitly needed for performance reasons
Express Edition: Often Microsoft release Express editions of their software which are the free or low cost versions which are generally not as fully featured as the Professional or Ultimate editions
Expression Blend: Microsoft's primary design tool for generating XAML markup

Foreign Key: A database entry which refers to the ID of another entry. Forms the cornerstone of a relational database . See Linq-To-SQL for People in a Hurry for more on relational databases

Generics: A variable type which can take another variable type as an argument. Most commonly encountered with the List<T> type, where T is another type. See C# for People in a Hurry

Interface: A template for a class that specifies properties and methods to implement. See C# for People in a Hurry

Model, View, View-Model: A design pattern for Windows Phone applications. See MVVM for people in a hurry for more details

Object initialiser: The handy C# syntax which allows the object properties to be assigned at instantiation. See C# for people in a Hurry
Object Relational Mapper (ORM): Code for saving and retrieving objects to and from a database. See Linq-To-SQL for people in a Hurry for more details

Pattern: A coding convention. Used all the time in Microsoft speak
Plain Old CLR Object (POCO): A term for any ordinary C# object
Project: A collection of files and settings that represent the major components of an application in Visual Studio. The project file ends in .cproj or .vbproj depending on the .NET language used

Relational Database: A database which is optimised for storing relationships between entries through the use of foreign keys . See Linq-To-SQL for People in a Hurry

Silverlight: The subset of WPF that is designed to be run in a web-browser. Analogous to Adobe's Flash plugin.
Solution: A collection of projects that represents a complete application in Visual Studio. A solution file end with .sln
State Dictionary: A global dictionary object that is preserved whilst tombstoned . See App Lfecycle for People in a Hurry
Structure Query Language (SQL): A broadly defined language commonly used to access data in a database

Tombstoning: A deactivated app is still loaded in memory but if the memory is needed, the system will free up everything but the navigation state and the app's State dictionary object. This is tombstoning. When activated again these objects are restored. See App Lifecycle for People in a Hurry

Visual Basic (VB): One of the original .NET languages. A little old fashioned and largely superseded now by C#. Based on BASIC
Visual Studio: Microsoft's primary coding environment

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF): A development platform for Windows applications based on XAML backed by VB/C#. Recent versions of Microsoft Office are written using WPF.

XAML: The XML based markup language used in Silverlight Windows Phone development for creating the user interface
XNA: The 3D game development platform for writing games on Windows Phone and XBox