Developer tools for Windows Phone 7.5 (aka Mango) have been released. It has also been announced that Mango will mark the start of a web-based Windows Phone Marketplace.

However, if you want to get to grips with it the good news is that the developer tools have been upgraded and you can download them now. Looking over what is new in the developer tools is a more precise way of seeing what Mango actually offers the developer  and really does cut through the hype!

This is a complete list of the new features:

• Background processing
• New profiler and emulator for testing
• Use of Silverlight + XNA together
• Silverlight 4
• IE9 web browser control
• Live Tile enhancements: use of back of tiles and ability to update Live Tiles locally
• Deep linking into apps from notifications and Live Tiles
• Additional sensors; direct camera access, compass & gyro
• Fast application switching
• Networking / sockets for communications
• Local SQL database for structured storage
• Access to calendar and contacts for apps

Microsoft has pretty graphic to try to show you how it all fits together.

It has also been announced that Mango will mark the start of a web based Windows Phone Market place.

More Information

Windows Phone Developer Tools download

Download Centre

New Windows Phone developer tools with Mango

Mango is Windows Phone 7.5