Beginning Windows 8 Application Development

Chapter 14

Advanced Programming Concepts

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• Understanding the scenarios in which solutions using more than one programming language (hybrid solutions) are advantageous
• Getting acquainted with the role and implementation of background tasks in Windows 8
• Learning how to query for the capabilities of internal and external input devices connected to your computer

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

You can find the wrox.com code downloads for this chapter on the Download Code tab at www.wrox.com/remtitle.cgi?isbn=012680. The code is in the Chapter14.zip download and individually named, as described in the corresponding exercises.

As the title suggests, in this chapter you learn several concepts that enable you to develop more advanced Windows 8 apps. By now, you should be familiar with all four Windows 8 languages (C++, C#, Visual Basic, and JavaScript). In previous chapters, you used them as exclusive choices to implement apps. Here you learn how you can mix these languages to provide an optimal solution in terms of productivity, user experience, and performance.

In Windows 8, for the sake of providing the best available user experience, only the application in the foreground receives resources from the system. Applications in the background (that is, suspended apps) cannot run code. However, in some situations even the suspended apps should have a connection with the external world, such as checking new e-mails, downloading information from ...