Some time has passed since our last Cave Dwelling adventure as I had to dig myself out of the Windows 8 and Getting Started with XAML adventures. At this stage I feel like I just took a gulp of fresh air, only to be dragged under by the next wave of technology … but that’s half the fun of IT and I believe it is time to transfer the first “baby steps” of Windows 8 study notes to my blog before I forget where I started.

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Basics

Landscape at a snap (glance)

Important URLs

• Learn to build Windows 8 Applications
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps
• Windows 8 Camps resources!
• Getting started with Windows 8 Application Development, by Dave Cooks:
• Windows 8 Introduction to XAML - part 1
• Windows 8 Introduction to XAML - Part 2
• Intro to XAML Part 2 - Challenge Solution
• Windows 8 Introduction to XAML - Part 3
• Windows 8 Introduction to XAML - Part 4
• Valuable reads
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd419663.aspx
• Portable Class Library: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg597391.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cbowen/archive/2012/08/01/the-top-10-windows-8-secrets-of-app-success.aspx
  

Windows 8 User Experience (UX)

• Windows 8 Start Screen is laid out with application tiles, stored in groups, creating an immersive (borderless, focused), fluid and (WinPhone-like) touch enabled user experience.
• Semantic zoom … applications can change the representation of data to show more or less detail as the user zooms in or out, rotating between portrait and landscape.
• Snapping … applications can display in full screen, snapped (left, right, custom) to constrained area or tile.
• Charms … actions supported by your application, such as connect your applications with other applications, friends, printing and modifying settings.
• App Bar … application bar that is the new aged menu bar, which is context-sensitive, hidden by default supporting the clean and immersive UI.
  

Windows 8 UX Guidelines

UX design guidelines I pencilled down while listing into an online workshops today include:

• Embrace Windows UI design principles, see Windows User Experience Design Principles and How to Design a Great User Experience
• Be fluid and responsive
• Snap and scale
• Invest in a great tile … first impressions last
• Be connected and alive
• Embrace the cloud
  

Windows 8 Application Framework

• We have support for the Windows 8 and Desktop style applications running on top of the Windows Kernel Services.
• Choice of development paths for Windows 8 Applications (structure, user interface and features)as shown in the image above includes:
  

  Dev Path	Stucture	User Interface	Features
  HTML/CSS/JavaScript	HTML	CSS	JavaScript
  XAML/C/C++/C#/VB	XAML	XAML	C/C#/VB

  
  

Windows 8 Application Lifecycle

• States –> Running, Suspended (Save and Restore Events) and Terminated
  

Important Keyboard Shortcuts

Useful keyboard shortcuts I am trying to memorize include:

Not to forget CTRL +K,C and U to comment and uncomment lines

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My first applications

On the left is the Cookbook sample solution from the Win8 Camps and on the right the XAML solution evolved during Dave Cooks:

I have lots to learn and explore, but what excites me I the quality and consistency of user interfaces … which no longer needs gazillion lines of complex code to achieve a user friendly UX Now to warm up to XML and XAML …

Other Cave Dwelling Notes:

• Willy’s Cave Dwelling Notes #1 – Cloud Computing
• Willy’s Cave Dwelling Notes #2 – Windows Azure
• Willy’s Cave Dwelling Notes #3 – C# … re-visiting some interesting features
• (Willy’s Cave Dwelling Notes #4 – Robert MacLean and co. poster and other gems)
• Willy’s Cave Dwelling Notes #5 – C# and Asynchronous Programming
• Willy’s Cave Dwelling Notes #6 – LINQ (Language Integrated Query)
• Willy’s Cave Dwelling Notes #7 – Doing technical demos (Snippets, etc.)
• Willy’s Cave Dwelling Notes #8 – PowerShell