Windows App Developer Links - 2012-09-26

posted on 25 Sep 2012 | App Developer Links

Windows 8 App Development

  • Creating a great printing experience in Windows 8 (Windows 8 app developer blog)

    • "When we reimagined Windows, we took the opportunity to rethink all the different aspects of printing - the user experience, the developer platform, and the broad device ecosystem - and how they work together to give a great overall experience. In this post, I give an overview of the user experience and the developer platform of printing in Windows 8. I also describe how you can tailor the user experience in a way that meets your app's requirements..."

  • Do more with less - Metro Design Series Part 6 (Brent Schooley)

    • "In the previous post in this series, we went through the third of five principles that guide successful Metro application design, authentically digital. Today I would like to talk about the fourth principle: Do more with less. This principle is all about focus. Traditional application design has often led us to lose sight of what is important in our applications..."

  • Windows Store App Xaml GridView with Variable Templates (Michael Scherotter)

    • "One of the useful controls to use when creating a Windows Store app for Windows 8 is the GridView which can use a VariableSizeWrapGrid to support item templates of varying size. Using this in conjunction with an DataTemplateSelector makes it possible to vary both the size and data template of the items in a GridView. Here is how you do it..."

  • Windows 8 Hub Pages: Top 10 Dos and Don'ts (Rick Locke)

    • "In previous weeks, we brought you posts highlighting the Top Ten things to avoid when designing Win 8 Live Tiles and Win 8 Splash Screens. Today's post takes the next step to highlight what the users experience after the splash screen clears. A Win 8 Hub Page is the first thing you see once your app has launched and it's the first glance into everything a user can do with the app..."

  • Hello Blog Reader Sample for the Windows Store in C#, Visual Basic.Net, JavaScript and even C++! (Greg Duncan)

    • "Today's Modern Monday post is kind of a repeat, but also kind of not. In the past we've highlighted building a "Hello RSS World" for Windows 8 series, Hello World... Building a simple RSS reader for Windows 8 Metro with HTML and JavaScript. Today's project takes so to a similar type of project, yet different. Not only does this project include C# and Visual Basic.Net versions (as well as HTML/JavaScript) but also includes a complete walk through and tutorial. When complete (or when you download the sample) you get a nice baseline for your own reader, with room for you to continue to extend and add features too..."

  • Part 7 - Windows Store - ListView (Sumit Dutta)

    • "In this article I will talk about listview control of WinJS in Windows Store. Let's write code to explore processAll and setPromise..."

  • 50+ Epic Metro Style Designs (Andy Sowards)

    • "So in the past couple of months i've really fallen in love with some of the metro designs I have seen around the net. I am a big fan of minimalism, and Metro Design is pretty minimal - except its also boxy, and colorful (if you want it to be) which is also another one of my favorite types of designs. So I really enjoy browsing through them, and today I put together a nice list of them for you to enjoy as well! If you aren't sure what "Metro Design" is or what kind of style this trend portrays, then, lets dive into what it is! Shall we? Lead the way!..."

  • Introducing Windows 8 and Windows Store Support (GameSalad)

    • "GameSalad is pleased to announce that we have joined with Microsoft to bring Windows 8 App Store publishing to GameSalad Creator in advance of the launch of Windows 8 in October! The Windows 8 Store is an incredible opportunity for the GameSalad community. With the Windows operating system reaching over 600MM computers in 200 markets worldwide, it's a terrific location to showcase and sell your apps. That's more than twice the size of the iOS market!..."

Tools, Services, Frameworks, & Libraries

  • Generic Object Storage Helper for WinRT - v5 (CodePlex)

    • "RELEASE NOTES: Functionality herein is the same as v4 however code has been refactored to more robustly check for null values. Also, a user reported that they were getting error: Error Found: The debug configuration test detected the following errors: "The binary WinRtUtility.dll is built in debug mode." when they ran their app through the Windows Application Certification Kit (WACK). The fix for this is easy, compile it in the Release configuration. I have done this and attached the resultant assembly herein..."

Visual Studio 2012

  • DirectX Graphics Development with Visual Studio 2012 (Visual C++ Team Blog)

    • "Visual Studio 2012 includes several new features for developing and debugging applications that use DirectX. Here are links to references and resources so you can get started with these new features. Getting Started..."