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2013 | Book

The Windows 8 Ethos and Environment Read chapter Read first chapter

Real World Windows 8 App Development with JavaScript

Create Great Windows Store Apps

Authors: Edward Moemeka, Elizabeth Moemeka

Publisher: Apress

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

Real World Windows 8 App Development with JavaScript offers you practical advice and hard-earned insights that will help you create and publish apps to a worldwide market.

Led by authors with deep Windows 8 app development experience, you’ll learn how to make the most of Microsoft’s APIs for hooking into Windows 8 on all devices, including the core ideas of promises and the asynchronous programming model. You’ll also discover such important tips as how to

Adhere to Windows 8 guidelines for successful app acceptanceExtend the appeal of your app with media, contracts, charms, and user notificationsCapture and work with media, including the ability to play video wirelessly to a televisionManage background processing and file transfersGain visibility for your app and add monetization options

Get the lowdown from authors with experience from the front lines of Windows 8 app development. Theory is all well and good, but when it comes down to it, you can’t beat practical advice from people who’ve been there and done it! You’ll come away from this book with all the tools, ideas, and inspiration you need to create successful Windows 8 JavaScript apps.

Development with JavaScript features real-world examples that emphasize the use of JavaScript and HTML 5 and that also adhere to the stylistic guidelines Microsoft has put in place to maintain a consistent look and feel for all applications on this platform.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. The Windows 8 Ethos and Environment
Abstract
Welcome to the brave new world of Windows 8. In this introductory chapter, you take a walk through the new, drastically different UI. You grab a glimpse into the meaning of “Windows reimagined.” You begin the exploration of what it means to a Windows app developer when you take away the iconic desktop concept and replace it with full application integration. Technological and social impacts are considered as you, the developer, prep through explanations, examples, and an examination of where the technology melds with the business of life.
Edward Moemeka, Elizabeth Moemeka
Chapter 2. Getting the Basics Right
Abstract
There are certain basic developer workflows to which you have to become accustomed if you intend to build Windows 8 apps, regardless of the technology stack you choose to use. At a fundamental level, having a good understanding of how to access the exposed file system is, if not critical, quite important to development in a given system. This chapter introduces you to these key areas by exposing you to the APIs used to work with them. Detailed examples are provided to help you work through how these APIs function. In this chapter you explore file-system access as well as some important elements of Windows 8 development new to the ecosystem. By the end of this chapter, you should understand how to do file access, how to interact with the lock screen, how to prompt the user with file dialogs, and how to use splash screens to keep the user engaged while the application continues to load in the background, and subsequently notify the user.
Edward Moemeka, Elizabeth Moemeka
Chapter 3. Incorporating Layout and Controls
Abstract
Modern Windows user interface programming has always involved some form of controls—reusable user interface elements that encapsulate predictable behavior in the form of user experience. This tenet of Windows development hasn’t changed with Windows 8. In this chapter, you learn how controls are exposed to you as a Windows 8 JavaScript developer in the form of interactivity controls such as buttons, list boxes, and so on; and layout controls, which you can use to structure the manner in which your app’s user interface is organized.
Edward Moemeka, Elizabeth Moemeka
Chapter 4. Navigating the Media Maze
Abstract
Media experiences have long been a weakness in Microsoft platforms, but not because those features aren’t inherently available in the system. Windows provides a wide spectrum of built-in playback and management features. The area in which the platform has fallen short is in the exposing of media content-creation and -management facilities to the end user. If you know DirectX or any of the low-level APIs, then you’re good to go as far as this. But the reach of such technologies has traditionally not fallen far from organizations with the funding to hire resources with that knowledge.
Edward Moemeka, Elizabeth Moemeka
Chapter 5. Making the Most Out of Charms and Contracts
Abstract
Contracts and charms are two new concepts introduced in Windows 8 that not only revolutionize the activity of app-to-app communication, but also introduce new usage scenarios for developers to work with. Using charms, the user can search across the entire device as well as in applications, send content to other applications or devices, and access settings in a standardized manner. Interoperability between applications can be further enhanced with the use of contracts. The beauty of this approach is that each application installed on a Windows 8 system enhances the system capabilities through well-defined extensions to formal interactions such as opening a file or choosing a contact from the contact store. As a Windows 8 app developer, you use contracts as a mechanism to handle a user’s interaction through charms; you also use contracts to facilitate this implicit interaction between applications. This chapter talks more about contracts later. Let’s get started.
Edward Moemeka, Elizabeth Moemeka
Chapter 6. Solving the Printing Problem
Abstract
Now that you know all about charms and their usages and functions, you can get into the specifics of their real-world use. Chapter 5 discussed the Devices charm. This chapter delves into greater detail on using this charm for one specific scenario: printing. As stated in the previous chapter, when printing is enabled in an application screen, the user can see potential printing devices in the fly-out property page for the Devices charm. This chapter also compares and contrasts printing in Windows 8 with printing in Windows legacy applications. And you review samples in which a print task is created. Let’s get started.
Edward Moemeka, Elizabeth Moemeka
Chapter 7. Providing Clear Notifications
Abstract
The discussion in the previous chapter ended with a walkthrough of the Windows 8 lock screen, including an example of using the notification mechanisms built in to the Windows Store APIs to send messages to the user in one form or another. This leads into a discussion of two key types of notifications: toasts and tiles. This chapter examines these notifications, the purposes they serve, and how you as a developer can engineer them to most effectively serve your app and your users.
Edward Moemeka, Elizabeth Moemeka
Chapter 8. Keeping Apps Running in the Background
Abstract
It should come as no surprise to anyone that the term Windows as defined, coined, and trademarked by Microsoft relates to the computing feature whereby the functioning area of an application can be partitioned to a corner of the screen, moved around, and maximized to take up the entire screen surface area. In short, Windows allows you a “window” into a running application. Through the years, that ability to display an application evolved into being able to run and use multiple applications, complete with window overlap, fast task switching, and many more delightful features we have all come to know, love, and expect from a self-respecting operating environment like Windows, Mac OS, and even Linux and Unix trees of products.
Edward Moemeka, Elizabeth Moemeka
Chapter 9. Monetizing Your App: The Lowdown
Abstract
When all is said and done, most developers aren’t in it just for the sake of creative expression. In most cases, you want some financial gain from the work you’ve done—even if it’s only enough to cover the expenses of building an application. And to be sure, building and maintaining modern apps can get very expensive very quickly. For one thing, because of the sandboxed nature of Windows 8 apps, many features—specifically of those applications built to target the legacy desktop—aren’t available in the Windows 8 app world. Windows 8 apps are of course sandboxed for a reason—to minimize the damage a misbehaving application can do to a device—but the side effect of these well-deserved limitations is a need for apps to generally include a cloud component. This cloud-resident part of the application functions like a traditional application with full access to the cloud server’s environment. Hosting such a solution quickly turns your fixed-cost app (the sweat equity used to build the application has a onetime price tied to it) into a recurring-cost app.
Edward Moemeka, Elizabeth Moemeka
Chapter 10. Getting Your App on the Windows Store
Abstract
The previous chapter dove in to monetization of your app. But you’re not quite there yet. Some administrative duties await that mustn’t be ignored in order for you to get your app published in the Windows Store. Pay attention: you’re completing the final step toward sharing your Windows 8 app with the world.
Edward Moemeka, Elizabeth Moemeka
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Real World Windows 8 App Development with JavaScript
Authors
Edward Moemeka
Elizabeth Moemeka
Copyright Year
2013
Publisher
Apress
Electronic ISBN
978-1-4302-5081-4
Print ISBN
978-1-4302-5080-7
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-5081-4

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