Windows App Developer Links - 2012-09-14

posted on 13 Sep 2012 | App Developer Links

Windows 8 App Development

  • 5 Reasons To Start Building Windows 8 Apps Right Now (Peter North)

    • "The next big app market goes live on October 26th, when Microsoft releases Windows 8 to the general public. If you're a developer, you'll want your polished, pixel-perfect app in the Windows Store on day one. Microsoft is giving app developers early access to Windows 8 development tools and resources, and if you take advantage of the opportunity, you'll have your Windows 8 app submitted, approved, and in front of millions of Windows 8 users who are looking to populate their brand new operating system with fun, useful, and practical apps... preferably yours..."

  • Building Data and Services for Windows 8 Apps (G. Andrew Duthie)

    • "In this post, I'm going to kick off a series in which I'll walk through the creation of a back-end service for a Windows 8 app. This first post will provide an overview of the series, and introduce a couple of potential technologies you can use to build your back-end services..."

  • Inspecting local and roaming settings for Windows 8 Store app (Andrei Marukovich)

    • "Class supports saving of complex hierarchies of local and roaming settings. Sometimes there is a need to verify saved values but unfortunately Windows 8 development toolset doesn't include any settings inspector. This post describes a method for inspecting settings manually..."

  • windows 8: binding a progressbar to a long running task (Michiel Post)

    • "A really common scenario in a Windows 8 / WinRT app (or any app) is to load data from the web or do some other action that takes a while to complete. While loading our data, we also have to update the UI to show some sort of loader so the user knows a bunch of data is being loaded. With Windows 8 and the Async / Task model it's really easy to do asynchronous task on another thread and not block the UI. But how do we show the user what's going on with the long running task? This blog post will show an easy way to use databinding in combination with Tasks..."

  • How to register a Windows Store developer account for free (if you are a student) (Karl Ots)

    • "If you've been waiting for invitation restrictions to lift or waiting for market support, you'll be glad to know that the Windows Store is ready for you to join now. The Windows Store is now open for app submissions from all developers - individuals (including Student developers) and companies. As a student, you get free access to the Windows Store for 12 months. A similar option is also available for MSDN subscribers and BizSpark companies, but this post focuses on student side..."

  • NFC on the Windows 8 Platform (Nokia Code Blog)

    • "The Proximity APIs enable you to create NFC apps for the Windows 8 platform. Designed to be easy to use and streamlined for the most common use cases, the APIs allow integrating powerful features into your apps in a very short time. At the NFC Congress in Hagenberg, Austria, we've just presented the first overview of those APIs during our Developer Workshop that was opening the conference..."

Free Training Materials

  • Windows 8 UX Fundamentals Training Workshop 2012 (Channel 9)

    • "Ready to learn about the tenants of a great app, how to think about information architecture, best practices for designing flexible layouts, touch, how to leverage contracts, and much more? Join us for the video version of the full-day training event designed to give UX designers a solid understanding of how to design great Windows 8 apps that leverage the full capabilities of the platform and follow the UX guidelines..."

Visual Studio 2012

  • Visual Studio Update this Fall (Brian Harry)

    • "For a while now we've been talking about increasing our delivery cadence for Visual Studio. Jason first talked about it at DevConnections in the Spring and I wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago outlining our general approach to cadence (focused on TFS). This week, at the launch of Visual Studio 2012, we gave a bit more insight into what we think the first VS 2012 update, later this Fall, will contain. I want to use this post to drill into that a bit more..."

Office 2013

  • Building Office for Windows RT (Office Next)

    • "Earlier this year, Steven Sinofsky announced Windows support for ARM processors (Windows on ARM or WOA). ... In the months since that announcement, there has been a great deal of speculation about what we are delivering. David Brodsky, Partner Test Manager and Josh Pollock, Principal Development Manager join Office Next to walk you through what Office for Windows RT is and why it exists; specific optimizations we've made (and why most of those will benefit you on other platforms too); what wasn't possible and the functionality differences that resulted; and finally how to get Office Home & Student 2013 RT..."