Windows App Developer Links - 2012-08-16

posted on 15 Aug 2012 | App Developer Links

Windows 8 App Development

  • Windows 8 RTM is available for developers (Windows 8 app developer blog)

    • "Two weeks ago we announced that Windows 8 released to manufacturing (RTM). Since then we've been preparing builds for distribution as described in the Windows 8 has reached the RTM milestone post on Windows Team blog. I'm happy to let you know that we are now ready with early access builds for developers. In this post I'll give you some pointers on the best way to get and install the RTM build and I'll also point you to resources you can use to get your apps up and running on Windows 8 RTM..."

  • Windows 8 RTM now available for Developers! (Shoham Dasgupta)

    • "More excitement in the Windows 8 space , for developers this time , with the release of the Windows 8 RTM for developers. The Windows Dev team has released a detailed blog post detailing how Developers can get their hand on the RTM version of Windows 8 and get working on creating apps on it. The blog also touches on what's new in the Dev Center, and overviews the migration guide for apps built on RP. More helpful links, sources and information below..."

  • Announcing the release of .NET Framework 4.5 RTM - Product and Source Code (Brandon Bray)

    • "Today, we are happy to announce the availability of Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012. You can develop apps that will take advantage of all the great features that we have added, including new features in Windows 8. We are also announcing the availability of the .NET Framework 4.5 reference source code..."

  • Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 is RELEASED - Here's 5 minute videos to get you up to speed quick (Scott Hanselman)

    • "Jason Zander announced today that Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 is RELEASED to web. The .NET Web Tools Team (the team I'm on) has coverage on their blog as well. I thought I'd showcase some Tiny Happy Features that the team worked on just because it made life better. Some are large some are small, but all are tiny happy features. I'll continue for a few more Tiny Happy Features over the next few weeks but this last week I took some time and recorded 13 (ya, thirteen, oy) short videos to show you guys these features in action..."

  • Designing For Device Orientation: From Portrait To Landscape (Avi Itzkovitch)

    • "The accelerometer embedded in our smart devices is typically used to align the screen depending on the orientation of the device, i.e. when switching between portrait and landscape modes. This capability provides great opportunities to create better user experiences because it offers an additional layout with a simple turn of a device, and without pressing any buttons. However, designing for device orientation brings various challenges and requires careful thinking. The experience must be as unobtrusive and transparent as possible, and we must understand the context of use for this functionality..."

  • Exploring the StorageApplicationPermissions (David Davis)

    • "The other day I was researching the different file access scenarios available for Windows 8. I needed the research for my chapter on accessing data in my Windows 8 Book (more on that later). The restrictive sandbox that Windows 8 applications operate in can prove challenging. To access data outside the sandbox and Windows libraries you have to use the pickers..."

  • Adding multiple lines of text to your Win8 tile update (Shawn Kendrot)

    • "Live tiles is one of the best things about Windows Phone and WinRT. I love how easy it is to add updates to your tiles in Windows Phone but hate how limited the updates are allowed to be. With WinRT comes a new API and more robust tile updates. ... The TileNotification needs to be created with XML (an XmlDocument to be exact) but I had not idea what XML elements are needed (Seriously, is all of the abstraction really needed here? This is suppose to be a simple sample to let devs see how to quickly and easily create a tile update). All I wanted to know was how to format the XML!..."

  • Cancelling Periodic Updates (Jared Bienz)

    • ""What are periodic updates" you might ask? Well, you probably know that you can update live tiles in code, from background services and using Push Notification Services. But sometimes, none of these are the right approach. ... What we need is the ability for the server to tell Windows to stop polling for updates. Unfortunately there's no option for that in the tile schema, but it is possible to cancel the subscription by setting an HTTP header in the response..."

  • How to enable loopback and troubleshoot network isolation (Windows Dev Center)

    • "This topic explains the how to enable loopback for network access and how to troubleshoot network isolation issues in Windows 8 for a Metro style app..."

Tools, Frameworks, & Libraries

  • Web Essentials 2012 (Visual Studio Gallery)

    • "Adds many useful features to Visual Studio for web developers. Only works in Visual Studio 2012 RTM..."

Visual Studio 2012

Expression Blend

  • Available Now: Blend for Visual Studio 2012 (Microsoft Expression Blend Team Blog)

    • "Today, I have the great pleasure to announce the latest release of Blend. In this release cycle, our big focus has been Windows 8: Blend now supports UX authoring not just for store apps written in XAML, but also for those written in HTML. We want to make it really easy for you to create great apps for Windows 8. Therefore, we are now including Blend with Visual Studio 2012, including the free Express for Windows 8 version for authoring Win 8 store apps. With one fast download and install you get VS for your coding-centric tasks and Blend for visual authoring..."

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