The Difference Between Silverlight and Silverlight Based Phone 7 Apps

The past week I was asked a couple times about the difference between Silverlight and Silverlight for phone 7. Really? Other then a few minor technical differences in the most current version of Silverlight vs a bit more limited version in phone 7. The cool thing is that Silverlight for phone 7 really is Silverlight so the same code base can be used on just about anything. But back to the details. Phone 7 is just a 'specific' more limited version so most stuff you can normally do work fine. There are no new skills, not really anything new save maybe a few api's specific to the phone. The biggest diffence is really just the basic pages and user control names. In phone 7 you really have a set size and 2 orientations. That being the case the phone 7 silverlight team has built these controls to deal with the 2 orientations of the screen and the specific size for phone 7. With that start making phone 7 apps its easy and fun just like any other Silverlight app. ok well you will need to download the special wizbang version of visual studio for phone 7 from http://www.Silverlight.net/ just click on 'Get Started' and go from there.