Stories about designing applications for Windows 8

Our blog colleagues, Creating Windows 8 Blog, and completing the guides to designing and developing applications for Windows 8 on MSDN, have recently laid out some interesting stories about how to design our own applications and how to design applications for popular scripts. Below you will find a selection of links to these stories.

Real applications

People application

Managing “contacts” was a difficult task for many, especially after increasing the number of PCs and devices used to access contacts. Storing contacts in the cloud to make moving and connecting easier is only part of the solution. With Windows 8 and the new People application, we are taking cloud storage to a new level, allowing it to be connected to other services that you already use. In this way, email, service accounts and social networking contacts are combined in one easily accessible and convenient location that is available on all your Windows 8 PCs and mobile phones.
')
Mail application

Since the release of Windows 8 Release Preview, hundreds of thousands of people daily use the preliminary version of the Mail application. We also constantly update this application in the new Windows Store and plan to update it further. In this publication, we will look at the Mail application from the inside and talk about its structure and capabilities, especially those related to the principles of designing Metro style apps. We will not list all the features of the application or features that will be implemented in the future, but focus on its structure and integration with Windows 8.

Calendar Application

This article is based on the materials presented in the articles about the Mail and People applications, and tells in detail about the Calendar application. We have done a lot of work to integrate these applications into a single complementary communication set that connects to the cloud services that are most important to you. This article details the integration with Windows 8, some of the components in the current preliminary version, as well as the features currently being developed. We will also briefly touch on the history of the system development and talk a little about iteration.

Photos application

At the end of a series of articles about some of the new applications in Windows 8, we will look at the new Photos application. With this application and Metro style design principles, we decided to develop an application that will allow you to collect photos from various sources, and then view and share them.

Typical scripts

Game scripts

Usually the game consists of several components. In addition to the game itself, there is a menu that provides access to other areas (for example, the achievements screen), the options menu, the help menu, and entry points to various areas of user interaction. Inside the game itself, there may also be numerous teams located in various menus. All this is formatted content that the user can interact with, and in a first-class game for Windows 8 Release Preview, the user sees this content immediately, bypassing all the random intermediate elements of the user interface. In this section, we will look at how to arrange the game in Metro style, while improving user interaction.

Entertaining scenarios

Windows 8 provides ample opportunities to interact with a variety of devices, ranging from touch tablets to high-resolution laptops and desktop computers. Many of the new features of Windows 8 are designed exclusively for multimedia and entertainment programs, providing publishers of diverse content with new ways to connect, interact and communicate with their audiences.

News scripts

Windows 8 supports a wide range of devices — from touchscreen tablets to full-size laptops and desktops. Thanks to this variety of form factors, news publishers can create convenient interfaces for a wide variety of tasks and, with the help of a single application, reach a significant audience.

Performance scenarios

Windows 8 is an excellent platform for productivity applications. In addition to the usual desktop environment, ensuring that existing productivity applications work properly, the new environment for Metro-style applications allows you to create new and modern types of productivity applications. This section presents various ways to improve application performance when using Metro styles and Windows 8 features.