Viewing Windows Phone 7 Marketplace on the simulator

Since I’m out of the countries where WP7 Marketplace is available it’s been a real pain to check out new games and most of all if Vizati was already available.
Btw it’s out there, go give it a try, there’s a trial mode. It’s great fun 🙂

So searching some forums I found a neat code to check this on the simulator.

Basically create a new WP7 Silverlight App and write this main page code

public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage
    {
        // Constructor
        public MainPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
 
            var task = new MarketplaceHubTask();
 
            task.ContentType = MarketplaceContentType.Applications;
 
            task.Show(); 
        }
    }

Run it and you’ll get this

Oh, the first time you launch the simulator you’ll get a connection error, usually if the simulator just booted. Just launch the app again