Beginning Visual Basic 2015

16 Windows 8 Apps

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• What are Windows 8 apps?
• Built-in controls
• Coding Windows 8 apps with XAML
• Your first Windows 8 apps
• Using styles to handle layout changes

Wrox.com CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at www.wrox.com/ begvisualbasic2015 on the Download Code tab. The code is in the 092117 C16.zip download and individually named according to the names given throughout the chapter.

With the release of Windows 8 comes Windows 8 apps. Developers using Visual Studio 2015 can build these next-generation applications and release them to the Windows Store to sell to users around the globe. Sound familiar? Google and Apple have been working with developers building and releasing apps to Google Play and Apple’s App Store. In the July 2015, Apple totals more than 1,200,000 apps in its App Store. Google’s Play housed over 1,300,000 apps and has now surpassed Apple. In its shorter life, the Windows Store has over 300,000 apps. As you can see from the numbers, there is a lot more room for Windows 8 apps.

Windows 8 applications are built to be touch friendly and run on many devices. These new types of applications move away from the normal design of mouse-clicking driving the interface design for actions. Now, developers must think of the use of fingers, pens, and yes, a mouse, too, to use and navigate applications. Think about using a tablet rather than a desktop for Windows 8 design (although your ...