Windows App Developer Links - 2012-06-13

posted on 12 Jun 2012 | App Developer Links

Windows 8

  • A look at Windows 8 devices (Microsoft UK Faculty Connection)

    • "For all of you who have asked what Windows 8 devices will be available later this year? Here is a quick run down on Windows 8 devices from the Computex, as you may be aware from the press announcements Intel made the statement that more than 20 Windows 8 tablets with Intel innards are on the way, meaning these are new slates from Acer, ASUS and Samsung here are some of the models which were on display at Computex and reviews via the verge and engadget..."

Visual Studio 2012

  • Visual Studio Feature Packs (Zain Naboulsi)

    • "I was talking with a customer the other day that uses Visual Studio Ultimate for many of its developers and just happened to mention the feature packs. I was surprised to discover that he didn't know much about them so thought I would do a general discussion on them for folks. NOTE: Some feature packs have a minimum level required to use them and may require higher level SKUs to use them. What is a Feature Pack?..."

Metro App Development

  • What you need to know about developing for Windows on ARM (WOA) (Jason Zander's blog)

    • "In this blog post, I'll walk you through developing an application to run on an ARM PC. What you'll find is that developing an app for Windows on ARM is the same as developing a Metro style app for x86/64 PCs; that is, the same Metro style app will run on either hardware. Also, many Visual Studio paradigms you've come to know from building other application types (designing, testing, debugging, etc.) will carry over to your experience of building Metro style apps. In addition to the walkthrough below, I've also recorded a video so you can see this in action..."

  • Windows 8 UX fundamentals-free virtual training (Windows 8 app developer blog)

    • "Metro style apps are the focal point of the user experience on Windows 8 Release Preview. Great Metro style apps share an important set of design traits that provide a consistent, elegant, and compelling user experience. With the first apps in the Windows Store, it's exciting to see app designers begin to push the boundaries of the Metro style design principles on Windows 8. There's plenty of innovation and beautiful apps to come. If you are a developer or designer creating a new user experience for your Metro style app and you want to learn how to get started, this free virtual training is perfect for you..."

  • Improving the Startup Time of Xaml Metro Style Apps with Multicore JIT (Jérôme Laban)

    • "TL;DR: Microsoft introduced the Multicore JIT, which allows the recording of JITted methods during the startup of the app. This recording can be packaged in a Metro Style app for faster startup on Multicore CPUs by performing background compilation. Improvements range between 20% to 50%..."

  • How to call WinRT APIs from C# Desktop applications - list the installed Metro packages (iinspectable)

    • "A tool has been built to help Microsoft engineers to more easily check some basics of a Metro App such as implemented contracts or logos. This is a WPF Desktop application written in C# and its first task is to enumerate the installed Metro App packages. I can imagine other scenari where you will certainly be interested in automatically checking that your application is well installed. This post will detail how a .NET developer could leverage WinRT from his Desktop application..."

  • Windows 8 XAML Tips - Custom Fonts (Fons Sonnemans)

    • "I have developed XAML applications in Silverlight (Browser and Phone) for a couple of years. I used custom fonts in those Apps using Expression Blend. It contains a Font Manager which you can use to embed a font into the application (project/assembly). Blend for Visual Studio doesn't allow you to use the Font Manager. The menu option is disabled in this Release Candidate. I hope to get it back in a future version. The default FontFamily in a Metro app is ‘Segoe UI' which is called ‘Global User Interface' in Blend. You can of course use Blend or Visual Studio to select another FontFamily. But if your user doesn't have this font installed you will get the default font. That's why you will have to add the font to the application..."

Apps & Code to Look At

  • Metro App Installer (Microsoft TechNet)

    • "This application eases the installation of Windows Metro App packages that are still in development. It makes it easier to pass the application packages internally and send it to clients for feedback. You just need the APPX file and the signing certificate file."

Other

  • Font Awesome (Dave Gandy)

    • "The iconic font designed for use with Twitter Bootstrap. Desktop Font + Vectors, 70 New Icons in v2.0, IE7 Support, One font, 220 icons, Free for commercial use, Screen reader compatible, Made for Twitter Bootstrap, CSS control, Infinite scalability..."