Introduction to Windows 8 Metro Part 2
Author: Andrea Boschin
Price: $2.99 
Formats: PDF, Word, EPUB, MOBI
Number of pages: 56
Release date: November 2012
This ebook collects the final 10 chapters of SilverlightShow article series 'Windows 8 Metro'.
In this second part of the ebook (first part available here) Andrea introduces search and contracts, explains how to add settings to your app, use tiles, animations and transitions, application bars, apply globalization and more.
From the author: In the recent days an epocal change is becoming evident. If you tried to download the new Windows 8 Consumer Preview, available for free on Microsoft website, you know what I mean. The change, that is greatly focused on a new user experience, is driven by the growing power of portable devices that are becoming prevalent on common desktop and laptops. Up to the day before today, tablet PCs, smartphones, and generically speaking touch-enabled devices was expensive and not effective, but they are now something that common people start to take in serious consideration from the effectiveness perspective and also from the economical point of view.
As said, this change is mostly focused on a new user experience due to the fact that there is a shift of the attention from the business software to the consumer market. Never like today the wide availability of consumer application have been important and this, joined with the new touch paradigm requires a completely new set of rules to design the experience and the interaction of the user with your software.
In this series I aim to share my evolving experience with the new Windows 8 Metro Applications. As few people knows I have a graphical background that lives side by side with my programmer soul. During this series I would like to discover most of the wonderful tools behind Metro applications.
Chapter 1: Win as one with search and share contracts
What is a contract?
About search..
…and about share
Other contracts
Chapter 2: Add settings to your application
Hook up the settings flyout
Use your own UI in settings charm
Save your settings locally or roamed
Use settings with charm
Chapter 3: Enforce fluidness with animations and transitions
About Transitions…
…and about Animations
Fastness & Fluidity for free
Chapter 4: Using tiles to power up your application
Understanding tiles
Using the notification queue
Updating tiles in a real world
Chapter 5: Badges and Lock screen notifications
What is a badge?
Pushing badges (and tiles) to the lock screen
Opt-in for lock screen notifications
Tiles, Badges, Notifications and the Simulator
Chapter 6: Discovering the Application Bars
Giving a name to the bars
Bars basics
Extending the app-bar space
Differences from Windows Phone 7
Chapter 7: Understanding globalization
What's new in localization?
Setup your project
Globalization recipes
Certification & Globalization
Chapter 8: Make your app alive with background tasks
What does it mean "Background Task"?
Setup the task
Debugging the tasks
A lot of opportunities
Chapter 9: Implementing push notifications #1
The architecture behind "Push Notifications"
Building the cloud service
Moving to the device
Chapter 10: Implementing push notifications #2
Back to the cloud service
Sending a badge update
Sending a tile update
Sending a toast message
The client point of view
Other kind of notifications
About the author:
Andrea Boschin is a Silverlight MVP from Italy who currently lives and works in Treviso, a beautiful town near Venice. He started to work in the IT relatively late after doing some various jobs like graphic designer and school teacher. Finally he started to work into the web and learned by himself to program in VB and ASP and later in C# and ASP.NET. Since the start of his work, Andrea found he likes to learn new technologies and take them into the real world. This happened with ASP.NET, the source of his first two MVP awards, and recently with Silverlight, that he started to use from the v1.0 in some real projects.
Andrea blogs at http://silverlightplayground.org/ and tweets from @aboschin.