Windows 8 App Development

• An easy solution for improving app launch performance (.NET Framework Blog)

• • “Dan Taylor, a program manager from the CLR performance team, shares how multicore JIT can make your app start faster. The best part — you just have to include two lines of code to try it out…”

• Make great Windows Store apps (Windows Dev Center)

• • “Windows Store apps are the focal point of the user experience on Windows 8, and great Windows Store apps share an important set of traits that provide a consistent, elegant, and compelling user experience. Here you learn about the 8 traits of great Windows Store apps…”

• Walkthrough: using Windows 8 Custom Protocol Activation (Jerry Nixon)

• • “Protocol activation, what is it? Well, when you run “http:{something}” you expect a browser to launch, right? When you type “mailto:{something}” you expect a mail client to launch, right? What if you could create “custom:{something}” that launched your app? That’s custom protocol activation!…”

• Toast Notifications in Windows 8 (Rohit Shaw)

• • “In this article, I will explain about the Toast Notification and also see how we can utilize it in our Windows 8 Apps…”

• Windows Store app Dev Snack: Dealing with Async warnings (Robert MacLean)

• • “In this post I am going to look at a side effect you find a lot with when using the new async modifiers: compiler warnings. While this post is in my Windows Store app dev series, it applies equally well to development on .NET 4.5 with ASP.NET, WCF, WPF etc… really anywhere you use Async…”

• Windows Store-Publishing, Images, Screenshots, etc. (Mike Taulty)

• • “A few people have asked me around this – when it comes to publishing your Windows Store app you need to include a good description, good screenshots and so on. The best place to go and read up an all this are the links below which get increasingly more specific…”

• Windows Store Apps-Debugging a Broken Share Contract Implementation (Mike Taulty)

• • “This is probably something that you’ve seen if you’ve been working with Windows Store apps for a while but it just happened to me so I thought I’d share…”

• Microsoft DevRadio: Community Corner – Update Controls for Windows 8 app Development (Channel 9)

• • “In today’s Community Corner, Chris Koenig welcomes Microsoft MVP Michael L. Perry to the show as he demos for us an application he built called Update Controls which can help Windows 8 app developers simplify their code by automatically discovering dependencies so that you won’t have to manage them in your view model…”

Tools, Services, Frameworks, & Libraries

• Project Hawaii (Microsoft Research)

• • “With Project Hawaii, you can develop cloud-enhanced Windows Phone applications that access a set of cloud services and Windows Azure for computation and data storage. Project Hawaii provides the tools and services; you provide the creativity and imagination…”

Windows Phone 8

• Updated Windows Phone Store Badge Now Available (The Windows Phone Developer Blog)

• • “I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of the refreshed Windows Phone Store badge. The badge provides official branding assets to help you market your Windows Phone app, and help your customers find it…”

Other

• .NET Framework 4.5 – Off to a great start (.NET Framework Blog)

• • “In this post, we will look at the adoption we’ve seen and feedback we’ve received since the .NET Framework 4.5 was released, two months ago. Since then, we’ve been getting great feedback from customers around the world…”