Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at this year’s Heartland Developers Conference (HDC). I gave an introductory talk on developing “Metro” applications for Windows 8. The goal of the talk was to cover some of the basic features that every developer writing Windows 8 apps would have to face when first getting started. Some of these features include:
- Obtaining Windows 8
- Obtaining the developers tools – e.g. Visual Studio 2012
- Understanding the Windows Runtime framework
- Specific application features such as:
- Roaming data (e.g. app settings) to the cloud
- Contracts and extensions
- Using the File Picker
- Implementing application settings (via the charms bar)
- Create app bars
- Understanding the application lifecycle
- Windows Store
- Registration
- Packaging
- Publishing
The talk went very well and I was pleased with the turnout of my session as well as the conference overall. As always, HDC has turned out to be a great developer resource. I look forward to returning next year.
The slides for my session have been uploaded here. I have also published the corresponding demos (Windows 8, C#/XAML) on SkyDrive, here. There are some great resource links in the last few slides so be sure to check them out.