Windows App Developer Links - 2012-09-06

posted on 05 Sep 2012 | App Developer Links

Windows 8

  • Setting up Virtualization using Hyper-V for Windows 8 (Jason Gaylord)

    • "So you've downloaded Windows 8, installed it on your box, and are ready to get virtual machines (VMs) setup. Now what? In Windows 7 days, this could be accomplished by using Virtual PC or VirtualBox (an offering from Oracle). With Windows 8, VirtualBox is still available. However, Windows 8 comes with a new feature that's been available for several years from Microsoft in Windows Server called Hyper-V..."

  • Introducing the Remote Desktop Windows Store App (Remote Desktop Services Blog)

    • "Hi everyone, I'm Rishad Madhura Kuzhiyil, a lead software developer on the Remote Desktop Virtualization (RDV) team. Our team is responsible for developing Microsoft RemoteFX in the Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 release. In this blog, I will introduce the new Remote Desktop app that's available in the Windows Store..."

Windows 8 App Development

  • Windows 8 Game Development For The Win (Bob Familiar)

    • "With the recent announcement by Unity and Epic on tool and framework support for Windows 8, I thought it would be good to review all the options for game development on Windows 8 and provide pointers to the support you need to get your game in the store. Games are going to be some of the most popular apps on Windows 8 and you are in a great position to take advantage of this huge opportunity. ... Developers have a plethora (lots) of options when it comes to language, framework and tools for creating a game for Windows 8. Below I tick off the ones I know about for C#, C++ and JavaScript developers with some pointers to resources..."

  • Azure Mobile Services: For Those Who Just Want to Code (MarkedUp)

    • "If you follow Azure news on the web you might have noticed a new Azure service being offered in preview form called Mobile Services. In this blog post we'll be doing a high level overview of what Azure Mobile Services is and what it gives you. In subsequent posts we'll dive deeper into how to get your hands dirty and actually use the thing. With this initial preview the Windows 8 app development scenario has been enabled. We're likely to see other platforms such as iOS and Windows Phone (my personal favorite) come on board as the Azure mobile team develops the new service..."

  • Tutorial Series: using WinJS & WinRT to build a fun HTML5 Camera Application for Windows 8 (1/4) (David Rousset)

    • "Using HTML5, JavaScript & CSS3, we're going to build a fun HTML5 camera application for Windows 8 and its Modern UI. You will learn how to use WinRT to access to the camera and the file system to take some pictures & videos. We will then work a bit on the layout with CSS3 grid & flexbox and provide some visual feedback to the user via CSS3 animations. I will also show you how to use WinJS and its FlipView control via a templating rendering JS function to embed the whole experience. At last, we will see how to manipulate the images taken with the camera to apply some filters effects via the canvas element or directly thanks to a C++ WinRT component..."

  • Convention Based Page Discovery With The Okra App Framework (Andrew Wilkinson)

    • "One of the key features of the Okra App Framework for developing Windows 8 apps is the navigation framework with its support for the MVVM pattern. By default pages and view-models are marked with attributes so that the framework can locate them. In this post I will describe how you can enable an alternative convention based approach..."

  • Running a Storyboard as a Task (Morten Nielsen)

    • "Sometimes you have some code that needs to run after a storyboard has completed. In my case I'm working on a little board game, and after each move (which I animate using a Storyboard), I need to figure out the next move, and either start a new play-animation or pass the turn to the other player. Therefore I run in a loop until the turn is over. You can detect when a storyboard has finished when the "Completed" event triggers, but that makes for some recursive spaghetti code. It's much easier if I could just "await" the storyboard using a task. So I created the little extension method below that makes this possible. All you have to do to start and wait for the storyboard to finish is..."

  • Microsoft DevRadio: Reasons Why You Should Develop a Windows 8 App (G. Andrew Duthie)

    • "I'm pleased to announce the availability of my next episode of Microsoft DevRadio, in which I talk to my fellow Technical Evangelist Jennifer Marsman about the top reasons for developing applications for Windows 8. From market potential and size, optimized discovery, flexible and money making opportunities, as well as free tools and guidance--- there's no better time than right now to develop your Windows 8 app..."

Windows Phone 8

  • Windows Phone 8 SDK Preview opens for applications Sept. 12 (The Windows Phone Developer Blog)

    • "In June we provided an early look at some developer features of Windows Phone 8, promising to share the Software Development Kit (SDK) in late summer. Select partners and developers have already seen early builds of the new SDK, helping to test the new toolset and get started on Windows Phone 8 apps. Today I'm happy to announce that the time has come to make the near-final kit available to more developers through the Windows Phone 8 SDK Preview Program..."