I am a veteran Delphi 6 programmer transitioning to C# development. My first project is a open source library that will have a minimal user interface since it is meant to be used as a Component primarily on desktop PCs running Visual Studio. My next project is going to be a Windows 8 phone app and I intend for that platform to be my primary focus for future C# development, not the desktop.
My concern is that I waste as little time as possible learning a presentation framework that will benefit or distract me from writing Windows 8 phone apps. The plethora of framework names I have already encountered include, WinForms, WPF (Windows Presentation Framework), Silverlight, Silverlight Mobile, Metro and there may be others.
Given my goal outlined in the first paragraph above, which is the correct framework to study for developing Windows 8 phone apps?
I read about the Portable Library Tools on this Stack Overflow thread:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5522355/windows-phone-7-wpf-sharing-a-codebase
But the reply by Simon Guindon seemed to indicate to me that it’s not the best solution for writing a competitive Windows 8 phone app.
8
Few things I do know from this weekend:
1) You need Visual Studio 2012.
2) You need Windows 8.
This is the list of project templates you get with the Windows Phone 8 SDK installed:
That’s from a post I made at the weekend. It’s not a complete answer I know, but I’m still feeling around the edges, so I’d be glad of some more input from others too.
1
You probably won’t use Windows Forms anymore for Windows 8 development.
Try VS 2012. Check: visual-studio-express-for-windows-phone. Quote from that page:
“Windows Phone SDK provides Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone and the assets to build epic apps faster using what you know. Use .NET to build your apps or take full advantage of the platform for your games with DirectX/C++. .NET apps and games can reuse their business logic across Windows 8, the web (ASP.NET), and Windows Azure so developers can move faster.”
A Microsoft (free) book that may help you know more about Windows 8 development is at: Programming MS Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I am not sure about the free part it may have restrictions or the offer may have expired.