Tag: Windows 8

DesignDevelopment

Windows Store apps–App features, start to finish

Came across an excellent resource for Windows Store app development that goes over the app features from start to finish.

This start-to-finish series helps you add features to your app to engage your customers and to create the kind of experiences that draws people in and delight them. Each guide walks you through building an app from scratch to app certification. Start with a basic flat or hierarchical app and add features from there!

List of app features lists on the site are:

  • Flat navigation
  • Hierarchical navigation
  • App UI basics
  • App state
  • File handling
  • User interaction
  • User interaction customization
  • Media playback
  • Geofencing

Each of these features includes both an HTML and XAML guide. Check it out.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/dn263202.aspx

Enjoy!

DesignDevelopment

Idea books for commercial and enterprise app design (including sample code)

Came across a great post on the Windows App Builder Blog for creating Windows Store apps.

Create great Windows Store apps that provide elegant, engaging, consistent and compelling user experiences in Windows. Idea books are a great starting point to inspire you when designing your Windows Store app. Idea books target different app categories and show what’s possible as well as how to create best-in-class experiences in your app.

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From the blog post, you can see the current list of idea books that have an accompanying code sample:

Enjoy!

References

http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/appbuilder/archive/2013/08/02/idea-books-for-commercial-and-enterprise-app-design-with-sample-code.aspx

CloudDevelopmentMobile

What Windows 8 Developers Should Know About The Cloud

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Great post by Bruno Terkaly on What Windows 8 Developers Should Know About The Cloud.

  1. Client-side developers do need to embrace the cloud. The increasing popularity of connected devices like tablet computers and smartphones is having a direct effect on the adoption rate of personal cloud services. You can expect both connected devices and cloud services to grow together.
  2. This trend has been accelerating over the past couple of years. Mobile and portable devices have limited internal storage and rely heavily on cloud services.

Enjoy!

Development

How to call WinRT APIs in Windows 8 from Desktop Applications

Great article by Scott Hanselman on How to call WinRT API’s in Windows 8 from a Desktop Applications.

Enjoy!

CloudDevelopmentMobileWeb

Windows Azure Mobile Services – Backend for Your Windows 8, iOS, and Android Apps

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Mobile app developers don’t need to care about servers and clouds, push notification services and databases. Windows Azure Mobile Services is a cloud-based offering that provides a complete backend for mobile apps including data access and push notifications, enabling you to focus on the mobile app infrastructure and code and forget about the server management intricacies. In this talk we’ll build a backend for a Windows 8 app, an iOS app, and an Android app — all accessing the same data store and server-side triggers.

Video: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/WindowsAzure/AzureConf2012/B01

References

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/

Technology

Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 RTM

Today was a big day for Microsoft. They officially released Windows 8/RT and Windows Server 2012 to manufacturing and as expected, the final build number is 9200.

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Availability

The OS launches to the general public on October 26, which is also the same day you can get your hands on a Windows Surface tablet. I can’t wait to try one out.

As with this announcement, the Windows Store is also open for submission of paid applications.

If you’re a developer, then you will be able to get Windows 8 from your MSDN or TechNet subscription starting on August 15.

Pricing

You can either upgrade for $39.99 (US) or with a purchase of a new PC. If you happen to buy a new PC from now until January with Windows 7, you will have the opportunity to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $14.99 (US).

I’m looking forward to trying the final version of Windows 8.

MobileTechnology

Microsoft To Release Their Own Surface-Branded Tablet

Microsoft is set to release two Surface-branded tablets that is will sell as competition to the Apple’s iPad. The Surface-branded tablets will be based on Windows 8 and Windows RT. They will also feature an integrated keyboard cover and a kickstand. See below for a sample screenshot.

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Also notice the new Microsoft logo.

Technology

Welcome to Windows 8 (Release Preview)

Yesterday Microsoft delivered the Windows 8 Release Preview, the final pre-release milestone of its next OS. Along with this release came related releases such as Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate (RC) and Visual Studio 2012 RC.

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If you know me, then you know I’m a huge Microsoft fan boy. I have a Zune, a few Xbox 360’s, an original Xbox, a Windows Phone (first the Focus and now the Lumia 900) and I’m a software developer specializing in Microsoft Development technologies (.NET Framework, C#, Visual Studio, SQL Server, Azure, etc).

Anyway I must say I absolutely love what Windows 8 is and the impact it will have on our every day lives. I’m still a little unsure to the lack of the Star button when in Desktop mode…but I’m sure that will grow on me.

I plan on redoing my main laptop from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 8. I’ll then install Visual Studio 2012 RC and begin exploring what is possible in Metro-style applications, the Windows Runtime, and fully embrace this change.

The Windows 8 Release Preview is here. Go get it now.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/release-preview

Here is a wonderful guide to Windows 8 Release Preview from Paul Thurrott’s Supersite for Windows. I highly recommend you take a look at everything he’s documented in his articles and the wonderful screenshots.