Faculty Connection is an online set of real-world resources and shared peer knowledge, the goal of the Faculty Connection site is to put relevant and applicable tools and information at the fingertips of technology educators.
The UK Academic Team is responsible for offering IT students and faculty members free access to software, for enhancing knowledge and skills by providing curriculum materials and other learning opportunities, for helping students achieve their dreams by organizing an international competition, and finally for assisting last year students through career resources and job opportunities at our customers and partners.
With this blog we want to inform you on our latest initiatives.
Enjoy reading and stay tuned!
The Microsoft patterns & practices team is responsible for delivering applied engineering guidance that helps Software architects, developers, and their teams take full advantage of Microsoft’s platform technologies in their application development project.
They have a simple goal of helping software development teams be more successful with the Microsoft application platform.
They do this by delivering guidance that:
− Helps to simplify the Microsoft application platform. − Provides solution guidance to common problems. − Helps development teams grow their skills and learn.
For more information: http://www.microsoft.com/practices
Guidance on how to create a Windows Store business app using C#, XAML and the Prism library.
Ever wanted to know how to start building Windows Store Business app take a look at the AdventureWorks Shopper reference implementation and the Prism for Windows Runtime library.
The AdventureWorks Shopper reference implementation uses the Prism library to demonstrate modern development practices such as the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern with navigation and app lifecycle management. Additionally the reference implementation demonstrates validation, application data management, accessibility, localizability, touch, search, tiles, tile notification, and multiple view states. It also provides guidance on testing your app and tuning its performance.
Similar to the Prism library for WPF and Silverlight or “Prism Classic,” Prism for Windows Runtime makes it easier to design and build flexible and easy-to-maintain Windows Store business apps using modern development practices.
These apps are “built to last” and “built to change.” They use design patterns that embody important architectural design principles, such as separation of concerns and loose coupling.
─ Reference Implementation (RI) – the Adventure Works Shopper RI demonstrates validation, application data management, accessibility, localizability, touch, search, tiles, and tile notification.
─ Quickstarts:
Hello World – demonstrates how to create a Hello World app for the Windows Store using the Prism library. Event Aggregator – demonstrates how to send loosely coupled messages between components.Validation – demonstrates how to validate data on forms in a Windows Store app.
─ Prism library
Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) with app lifecycle management and navigation Event Aggregator in a Portable Class Library Validation Delegate Command Flyout, Search, and Settings
─ Guide – “Developing a Windows Store business app using C#, XAML, and Prism for the Windows Runtime” is designed to help developers create Windows Store business apps using the Prism library.
The Prism library source code is available with the AdventureWorks Shopper reference implementation on the MSDN Code Gallery at http://aka.ms/prism-winrt-code. The Prism binaries are available on NuGet. Search for prism.storeapps and prism.pubsubevents.
You can view the documentation at http://aka.ms/prism-winrt-doc or download a PDF version at http://aka.ms/prism-winrt-pdf.
This post was originally posted at The Developer Movement, I wanted to share this with UK educators and students to demonstrate how easy it is to get started as a Windows 8 app publisher.
http://www.zipapp.co.uk
The promise: “Quick, simple and faster than hell”, “You don’t need to be a programmer”
The reality: Yes, a non-programmer can build a useful app in an afternoon.
ZipApp supports creating apps with the following types of content
Not much, you should have an idea for a suitable app and the content you want to include in the app.
When you finish creating your app, the ZipApp tool will send you a .zip file containing the code for your application. You cannot just take that code and publish it to the store. You will need Visual Studio 2012 and the Windows 8 Software Development Kit (SDK) to build the package that you submit to the store. Installing the Windows 8 SDK requires Windows 8. So all that to say, if you plan to publish the app you need
Now let’s dive into the tool and see how it works!
Visit ZipApp and create yourself an account by selecting Register
You can use a Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft, or Google account to log in, or you can just create a local account with a username and password of your choice.
Once you log in you are brought to your application screen. The developer of this tool must have a sense of humour, when you first log in you get a message “Yikes! You don’t have any applications…Click the ‘Create New’ link below to create one.”
As per the instructions, select Create New to create your first application
Next you are asked to enter some basic information about your app: a name and a description.
Select one of the predefined templates, they give you a snapshot so you get a sense of how the application will look with each theme.
Select a pre-defined icon. The icon you select will appear as a logo for your app on tiles, and if you have a blog feed with posts that do not have associated pictures, the icon will appear as a default image.
NOTE: I couldn’t find a way to upload my own icon, which was a little frustrating because I had a logo I wanted to use. If this really bugs you, it is possible to open up the application code after you get the package from the tool and replace the logo. Of course that means if I use the tool to update my app later I’ll have to re-do the work of replacing the icon. Maybe down the road they will add a browse to upload your own icon.
When you have entered your information select Create to continue.
NOTE: You can come back later and change any of these settings and values later if you change your mind.
Now you are back at the application dashboard and you can see your Application in the list. To add content to the application you need to create groups and articles.
Select View Groups to start adding content.
Since you have no content you see an empty list and a suggestion to create a new group.
There are 5 types of groups you can create
NOTE: You can re-order the groups after you create them by clicking on the arrows icon
I want to include a calendar of different races. Sadly, there is no RSS feed for that, but I do have a list of them I can provide as static content
A Static group by itself doesn’t display any content, so now I have to define articles to display in the group. For each article I can include formatted text, images, and hyperlinks.
Select View Articles to start adding content to the group.
Now I can add my first article to the group by selecting Create New on the Articles page.
Now I can specify a name, subtitle, and description for the article. I can also specify an image to display above the article.
If you decide to upload an image. You must browse to the image you want uploaded, then select the image and choose Insert to add it to your article.
NOTE: The image is optional, if you don’t specify one, the app will display the icon you selected when you created the app as an image. Including images for each article makes for a more attractive application.
NOTE: I found uploading images a bit buggy. It always showed the spinning icon as if it was still uploading, but when I selected Cancel and came back to the image screen, the image was in fact uploaded and I was able to select it and add it to my article.
Continue adding all the articles you want in the group. When you are ready to add a new group just click on Groups in the left hand menu.
This is really easy, just create a new group. Select the Facebook tab and then enter the page for the Facebook page whose posts you want fed into the application.
NOTE: You don't enter the entire URL just the page name, so for example if the page is at www.facebook.com/MyGreatPage you would just specify MyGreatPage in the Page field. I made the mistake of putting the entire URL and couldn't figure out why my Facebook group wasn't appearing. I didn't get an error message, I just didn't see the Facebook group in the finished app.
Creating a Twitter group is easy. Create a new group, select Twitter and specify either a twitter handle or a hashtag you want to use as search criteria for tweets to display in your app.
NOTE: Make sure you read the small print here, if you enter a hashtag AND a twitter handle, you will only see tweets from the specified user which use the specified hashtag!
Creating a YouTube group is easy. Create a new group, select YouTube and specify either a Username whose YouTube Playlists you would like listed, or the RSS feed for a YouTube feed.
Creating a RSS Feed group is easy. Create a new group, select RSS and specify the URL for the RSS feed (e.g. a blog feed) whose content you would like listed.
After you have defined all the groups and articles for the content you want to provide in your app, it’s time to download the app. Select Download from the top bar.
At the bottom of your screen (at least in Internet Explorer, that’s where it appears) You will see a pop-up showing a .zip app you can save to your computer.
Save the file to your computer.
Congratulations you have just built an app!
Yeah, I know, seeing a .zip file, or a list of files inside a .zip file isn’t that exciting, so let’s look at how you test and publish the app.
You will need to install Windows 8 and the Windows 8 SDK to test your application and see it running.
Once you have the Windows 8 SDK installed, launch Visual Studio 2012.
If you unzip the .zip file you downloaded, you will see the files that make up your Windows 8 app. The file with the extension .jsproj is the file you want to open from Visual Studio.
In Visual Studio on the top menu select File | Open | Project/Solution and then browse to and select the file ZipApp.jsproj
You may be prompted whether you will allow Visual Studio to open projects from untrusted sources. You cannot open the file in Visual Studio unless you select OK.
The project will now be loaded into Visual Studio. You can see the files listed in the Solution Explorer pane on the right hand side.
There are two ways to test the game.
To test your app, go to the menu and find the drop down arrow beside the play button where it says Local Machine, use that drop down to select either Local Machine or Simulator.
After you select your preferred testing option, select the play button or use <F5> to start the game.
Go ahead and try it!
NOTE: For some reason when I ran my app the first time I got a message telling me “my file content does not conform to specified schema” because my description attribute was invalid. When I double clicked on the error message it opened up the AppxManifest.xml file and when I scrolled over on the line that said started with <VisualElements I noticed some weird characters in the middle of my description string “#A13;D45” stuff like that. When I deleted those extra characters, the error went away.
Once your app is up and running try it out! select different groups and articles to see how it works.
NOTE: Unfortunately Search and Share do not seem to be supported. I suppose that might be difficult to do with all the different content, but it’s a shame, because Search and Share are great features to support in a Windows 8 app. As a programmer I can always add those features after the fact.
When you want to leave the app, return to Visual Studio (<CTRL><D> takes you back to the desktop) and select the Stop button to Stop running the code.
Now that you have seen the app in action, you may wish to go back to the ZipApp website and change the theme, the icon, add additional content, or change titles and subtitles and regenerate a new copy of the app. Do this as often as you want until you are happy with the results.
This How to Publish an app post provides detailed step by step instructions on how to publish your app.
NOTE: If an app connects to the internet that means it gets the IP address from the user’s computer. Since it is accessing information from the user that means you have to provide a privacy policy that declares how you use that information.
The privacy policy has to go in 2 places
What’s great about ZipApp is it generates a web page with a privacy policy for you and puts it in the About settings. YOU have to get the URL for that privacy policy and put that in the privacy policy field when you submit your app to the store.
To get the URL for your app’s privacy policy:
EcoPi – Monitoring boiler energy consumption using Windows Phone and Raspberry Pi
Final year university student Lewis Greyson at the Lincoln School of Computer Science (LSoCS) recently showcased his dissertation project along with his fellow students at a show and tell event held within the school. The event was designed for final year students to present their development work to all staff within the school with lots of high-quality work present ranging from IR tracking to mobile tourism applications. Lewis decided he wanted to use Windows Phone (WP) technology and a Raspberry Pi to power his project’s sustainability concept called ‘EcoPi’. Lewis describes his project:
“This project discusses research on the issues surrounding domestic energy consumption and climate change. The purpose of the research is to aid the production of a ubiquitous system informed from energy consumption literature. A user study will be conducted to monitor a household for a week using the developed system. It is suggested from the literature that the results of this study will show that the participants are not necessarily aware of how their heating system behaves. It is hoped the results will encourage the participants to make changes to their heating system, thus proving behavioural change. The overarching goal is show that mobile devices have a positive impact on the participant and therefore the devices can be used for such research”
The development side of the project includes a WP application that monitors user locations using either GPS or 3G with location data saved at intervals. A Raspberry Pi with a temperature sensor is housed in the user’s home with the temperature sensor located on the boiler. The Pi polls the temp sensor and stores the data to a database, the user can view timeline graphs on the phone of the boiler temperature and whether or not they were at home when the boiler switched on. This creates greater awareness of wasteful energy consumption from the boiler, allowing the user to act upon it.
Lewis was inspired to build a Windows Phone app following his experience on the Social Applications Development module at Lincoln. The module teaches students the underpinning design theory and development skills on how to combine the WP and Azure platforms to create apps with a social computing theme.
“The basic version of Windows Store will be free, so Win8 desktop/tablet/WP8 are all covered. Also all users of Unity Pro will get the basic Windows Store product for free.” Andy Brammall, EMEA Biz Dev for Unity
Announced by Unity is their support for small indies and students (as measured by a annual turnover of less than $100k)
Unity announced that they are now providing free licensing to iOS, Android and Windows/Windows Phone platforms.
This is a significant announcement for the UK with indie game devs and a great opportunity for you to build and publish games to both Windows & Windows Phone. Unity is one of the largest middleware frameworks utilised by all flavours of games developers. It’s estimated to have around 60% utilisation of the total game dev audience (including students). With this announcement Unity have allowed developer to publish games to all app stores so if your a developers who is currently developing for iOS & Android you can now look to publish these titles to Windows 8 and Windows Phone for FREE.
This announcement about free licensing takes away a key blocker which has prevented UK Students from publishing portfolios of games developed in Unity.
For more details see http://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/05/21/putting-the-power-of-unity-in-the-hands-of-every-mobile-developer/ and http://www.develop-online.net/news/44232/Unity-mobile-game-development-goes-free
Join Microsoft for this one day event to lean how Windows Azure can be used in curricula, support research endeavours, and enable student projects. Institution administrators can explore how to use Windows Azure for infrastructural and application needs.
Educators
Microsoft provides Educator Grants for educators wanting to use Windows Azure in their curricula through Windows Azure academic passes. More info
Students
Need access to Windows Azure outside the classroom? Working on a project on cloud computing? Or maybe your master thesis? More info
Researchers
Tap into resources offered by Microsoft’s Windows Azure Research Engagement project to take your research to the cloud. More info
Institution Administrators
Help your students get the technology skills they need to be successful through Microsoft IT Academy. More info
Register today
http://azureineducation.eventbrite.co.uk/
As part of our on-going commitment to add value to the education community we serve, we are thrilled to be working with JaNET to provide additional support and services to their user base.
JaNET provides and develops a network infrastructure to support world-class research and education to over 18 million end users and helps academic institutions to better communicate, collaborate and co-operate, globally.
With the JaNET network now peered with the our datacentre, both Microsoft and JaNET can build on this strong and unique foundation to add additional services that reduce costs and help make the community more competitive.
With the Cloud Services for Education agreement service already helping institutions, such as Goldsmiths, save in excess of £20,000 in legal due diligence, we are excited about the next stage in the evolution of our work with JaNET which is focused around Azure.
The press release from JaNET below covers these exciting developments in more detail, but in essence, with our joint dedication to the sector, Janet and Microsoft is able to offer improved access to infrastructure and application services such as websites, virtual learning environments and research projects.
A launch event for the strategic agreement, where a formal signing of the agreement will take place, is scheduled for the 21st May at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the full press release from JaNET is shown below.
Over 18 million students and staff to benefit from faster, more secure cloud-computing More than 18 million students, staff and researchers at institutions across the UK could start to benefit from a faster and more secure connection when using their institution’s cloud-based IT services, thanks to a new peering arrangement between Microsoft and JaNET, the UK’s research and education network. This new agreement enables improved access to infrastructure and application services such as websites, virtual learning environments and research projects. Janet has recently become part of the JISC group, the UK’s champion for digital technology in research and education. Connecting the networks privately eliminates the need to traverse data over the public internet. This enables a high bandwidth connection for students and staff to use Windows Azure. Bandwidth is managed, ensuring high-speed delivery with no delay or latency. The move to peer the Microsoft Windows Azure data centre to the Janet network comes as part of a new strategic alliance between the two organisations, being signed at Goldsmiths, University of London on Tuesday 21 May (press welcome to attend by prior arrangement). Professor Anne Trefethen, Chief Information Officer, University of Oxford: “In the UK, higher education institutions are fortunate to have high speed network services as provided by Janet. The capability afforded by Janet’s peering with Microsoft’s Azure Cloud with high-bandwidth secure connections creates new opportunities for researchers and the University community as a whole.” Professor of Computing Science at Newcastle University Paul Watson comments: “Cloud computing has the potential to revolutionise research by offering vast compute resources on-demand. At Newcastle University, we already have over £20M of research projects that are supported by the cloud. However, one of the major barriers holding back further cloud adoption is the time it takes to transfer large datasets from the lab to the cloud for analysis. This new link between Janet and the Azure Cloud removes this barrier, and will allow a far greater range of research projects to fully exploit the benefits of cloud computing.” The alliance agreement also means any UK education institution can benefit from standard terms and conditions on Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity software suite Office 365, negotiated by Janet. An early beneficiary of this arrangement is Goldsmiths, which is also one of a select group of institutions responsible for initiating work on the alliance. Basem El-Haddadeh, Director of IT Services at Goldsmiths said: “The work on Office 365 will save the sector considerable time and money in legal due diligence and speed up adoption of Office 365. We’re really pleased with the roll-out at Goldsmiths and our staff and students are already enjoying using the new system. I’m looking forward to the benefits the strategic alliance can bring.” “Through the peering and strategic alliance, we are demonstrating our commitment to UK research and education institutes’ increasing desire to access cloud technologies and we are complementing our world class fibre network with Microsoft’s leading technologies to support the sector,” said Dan Perry, Director of Product and Marketing at Janet. Steve Beswick, Director of Education, Microsoft Ltd said: “We are delighted to be working with Janet to provide additional value-added products and services to the research and education community. We have a long-standing relationship with this sector and are looking forward to more collaborative working with Janet to grow our offering.”
Over 18 million students and staff to benefit from faster, more secure cloud-computing
More than 18 million students, staff and researchers at institutions across the UK could start to benefit from a faster and more secure connection when using their institution’s cloud-based IT services, thanks to a new peering arrangement between Microsoft and JaNET, the UK’s research and education network.
This new agreement enables improved access to infrastructure and application services such as websites, virtual learning environments and research projects. Janet has recently become part of the JISC group, the UK’s champion for digital technology in research and education.
Connecting the networks privately eliminates the need to traverse data over the public internet. This enables a high bandwidth connection for students and staff to use Windows Azure. Bandwidth is managed, ensuring high-speed delivery with no delay or latency.
The move to peer the Microsoft Windows Azure data centre to the Janet network comes as part of a new strategic alliance between the two organisations, being signed at Goldsmiths, University of London on Tuesday 21 May (press welcome to attend by prior arrangement).
Professor Anne Trefethen, Chief Information Officer, University of Oxford: “In the UK, higher education institutions are fortunate to have high speed network services as provided by Janet. The capability afforded by Janet’s peering with Microsoft’s Azure Cloud with high-bandwidth secure connections creates new opportunities for researchers and the University community as a whole.”
Professor of Computing Science at Newcastle University Paul Watson comments: “Cloud computing has the potential to revolutionise research by offering vast compute resources on-demand. At Newcastle University, we already have over £20M of research projects that are supported by the cloud. However, one of the major barriers holding back further cloud adoption is the time it takes to transfer large datasets from the lab to the cloud for analysis. This new link between Janet and the Azure Cloud removes this barrier, and will allow a far greater range of research projects to fully exploit the benefits of cloud computing.”
The alliance agreement also means any UK education institution can benefit from standard terms and conditions on Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity software suite Office 365, negotiated by Janet.
An early beneficiary of this arrangement is Goldsmiths, which is also one of a select group of institutions responsible for initiating work on the alliance. Basem El-Haddadeh, Director of IT Services at Goldsmiths said: “The work on Office 365 will save the sector considerable time and money in legal due diligence and speed up adoption of Office 365. We’re really pleased with the roll-out at Goldsmiths and our staff and students are already enjoying using the new system. I’m looking forward to the benefits the strategic alliance can bring.”
“Through the peering and strategic alliance, we are demonstrating our commitment to UK research and education institutes’ increasing desire to access cloud technologies and we are complementing our world class fibre network with Microsoft’s leading technologies to support the sector,” said Dan Perry, Director of Product and Marketing at Janet.
Steve Beswick, Director of Education, Microsoft Ltd said: “We are delighted to be working with Janet to provide additional value-added products and services to the research and education community. We have a long-standing relationship with this sector and are looking forward to more collaborative working with Janet to grow our offering.”
There are hundreds of thousands of topics in the Dev Center, http://dev.windows.com and http://dev.windowsphone.com. We know in any organisation discoverability and sharing of content is critical to success.
So why not get to grips with this detail in person at Microsoft //Build/2013.
Last month Steve Guggenheimer announced //Build/ 2013, the conference is taking place June 26-28, 2013 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. //build/ is a great opportunity to learn more about developing Windows Store apps.
The conference will include great presentations, demos, info sessions, etc. There will be no better place to get the latest and greatest info on Windows Store app development.
You can see all the details about the conference and register at www.buildwindows.com.
Here are some key resources for the each roles in your organisation.
When you go to the Windows Store apps home page, you’ll see:
The Design section. You can find useful downloads and reusable design assets more easily, and design inspiration and case studies give you the tools you need to make a unique experience on Windows.
The business opportunity of the Windows Store is significant, with a better economic model than competitive platforms and flexibility that enables you to build the business you want. The new Market section of the site provides great tips for marketing your apps, evaluating telemetry data, and passing app certification.
With //BUILD/2013 less than a month away, stay connected by following @windevs @ukmsdn on Twitter and subscribing to the Windows Store newsletter for the latest information on Windows 8.
This week I had a very interesting meeting with Kim Blake from UKIE. Kim is a Next Gen Skills Talent Development Coordinator, and part of her role is to simply understand and explain the skills educators and game developers need to ensure that the maximise their potentials.
So we got into the discussion of a mobile developer today... The simply fact is, if your a real mobile developer you develop apps for all platforms iOS, Windows Phone, Android and the web?.
We then got into the discussions of how app development skills are truly transferable skills. For example to be a successful app developer you need to competent in the following areas.
1. Finance - How to monetize your app? Freemium, IAP, Paid, Subs Based..
2. Marketing - How to promote and market your app? Branding, Apps store advert and description
3. Social - How to influence your customers and channels? Twitter, Facebook, linkedin and blogs
4. Development - How to build an app effectively? Code portability, code reuse and cloud services.
So where do you get started building apps for Windows 8
With Windows 8 you can take your existing app development skills and start applying them to developing great apps.
Why should you build apps for Windows 8
Here are just a few of the benefits:
The info throughout this section is intended for developers who are creating apps for platforms like iOS, Windows Phone, Android, or the web, and who want to create similar Windows Store apps for Windows 8. To learn more, click one of the links in the preceding section.
Resources for iOS developers
Apply your existing iOS app development skills toward developing great apps for Windows 8.
Resources for Windows Phone developers
Apply your existing Windows Phone app development skills toward developing great apps for Windows 8.
Resources for Android developers
Apply your existing Android app development skills toward developing great apps for Windows 8.
Resources for web developers
Apply your existing web development skills toward developing great apps for Windows 8.
To successfully start creating Windows Store apps, you'll need the following at a minimum:
For Students Follow the Student resources guide
Cinder is a cross platform framework for C++ design engineering. In order to run and Apple, Android and Windows devices prior to Windows 8, the rendering libraries leveraged OpenGL as the open source, cross platform solution.
Even though DirectX has been Microsoft's preferred rendering solution for advanced graphics programming. Windows traditionally provided both DirectX and OpenGL support from the desktop. However, Windows 8 Store applications are now exclusively DirectX based, to maximize reusability across the entire domain of Microsoft experiences including Windows Phone, Windows RT, Windows 8, and gaming. This means that Cinder apps that leverage OpenGL for their rendering will not work as Windows Store apps.
To get a Cinder project running as a Windows Store app, the Cinder project needs to leverage a DirectX render instead of the default OpenGL renderer…”
Microsoft Evangelism team have been doing lots activity with the open source community in helping bring Windows Store support to Cinder. We are pleased to confirm there is now on a public branch on GitHub.
This is an initial implementation and there is still a bit of work to do ( such as adding XAML support, etc. ) but the broader creative coding community is already embracing it.
The following screenshots are from the DirectX, Windows Store samples that ship with the branch.
The getting started guide here:
http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/articles/Getting-started-with-Cinder-for-Windows-Store-Apps
As well as discussion on the official Cinder forums here:
http://forum.libcinder.org/#Topic/23286000001540037
And the DirectX / Windows Store branch of this library can be Cloned from here:
https://github.com/cinder/Cinder/tree/dx_rt
Some of the feedback so far:
“A big "Thank You" to Microsoft for investing in Cinder. I think it's a wise move: you'll get the love of hundreds of creative coders around the world, and word-of-mouth goes a long way! Looking forward to learn more about DirectX and the Windows 8 system. I hope video playback will be implemented as well, the current QuickTime-based solution is a big performance hog on Windows at the moment.” – Paul Hoax
“It's very exciting to see such a contribution to Cinder: definitely a win-win for both Microsoft and the Cinder community. For me, it will be the perfect opportunity to learn DirectX 11 and get my hands dirty on the more advanced features its graphics pipeline. Lots of potential there I believe! Cheers,” - Éric
Let me know how you are using Cinder and any feedback and thoughts on these resources?
So What is NEW at Design.windows.com?
A new UX Checkilist
Checklist is a welcome addition to design.windows.com. It can empower designers when self-evaluating their app so they can better understand what is required and prioritize when they make need to make tough choices. Guidance links are available for each checklist item.
How does this checklist relate to building beautiful apps?
In an effort to help all designers and developers understand UX requirements and considerations, the content team did a great job at ensuring alignment of topics and requirements across the published UX guidelines and to help developers ensure you apps meet the quality bar.
See the UX checklist.
Ensuring you app meets the needs of a Global Market
People using Windows 8 are located all over the world. We want your app to succeed and be ready for world usage so we have provided app design guidelines to ensure this.
Top Tips
See the updated document details.
Accessibility and Design are key for success
We want you to design your apps for use by the widest possible audience and create an accessible app. The doc previously known as “accessibility cheat sheet” is nowavailable with improved content on design.windows.com.
See accessibility details.
We want to inspire you
So to really help we have developed a new design inspiration (AKA “Idea books”) For your application ideas so be sure to check out these idea books which include apps for education, financial, medical and retail app ideas.
Further References and Resources
The UX guidelines
Browse through the UX guidelines index to read them all: