Yesterday I have watched the Keynote speech presenting to developers around the world the new Windows8 development ecosystem. And in my opinion the basic idea on what is going to happen, which programing skills we need to master and what we can carry with us from the .net world is summarized in the following basic figure: 
In this figure with light-blue we have the “old” paradigm and with light-green the “new” one. And as I see it in this “new” era XAML is there, C# is there and also HTML5 and JavaScript are now more “natively” supported, being two more than welcome additions to the picture. So if I tried to summarize the awaited change I would say: a new underlying API (WinRT) that understands more developers and provides richer functionality out-of-the-box along with a big set of new UI interaction ideas at the hands of the developer. Of course there are hundreds of features in this new ecosystem for the developer to harness and master but this for me is the general idea. Myself being a WPF enthusiast I was happy to see that XAML is still there and also the fact that VS 2011 and Expression Blend are the two IDEs that will handle the development workload for the developer. Having said that I wanted to get a “hands-on” experience on how it is to develop in this new ecosystem.
So in order to have some insight I have installed Windows8 on a virtual machine and tried to implement a very basic app in C# , XAML and then in JavaScript using VS2011 and Expression Blend 5. Below are my first thoughts/encounters/guidelines on how this can go:
Installing Windows8
Initially go ahead and download the .iso image for the Windows8 Developer preview from this link. Download the 64bit edition with VS2011 and Expression Blend 5. My approach then was to download VirtualBox from this link ,install it and then do the following:
Run VirtualBox, select New, name the VM Windows8, select Microsoft Windows as your OS and Windows 7 64bit as the OS Version. Specify that the VM will use 4GB of memory and create a virtual HDD of fixed size of at least 30GB. Once the VM is created mount the .iso you have downloaded and Windows8 will be up and running in no time!
Developing the Unit Converter in Windows 8 (XAML + C#)
At that point I was ready for development. I switched to Desktop in Windows8 and started VS 2011. We will create a simple Unit Converter in XAML,C# so we select Visual C#/Windows Metro Style/Application:
Read more: C# and .NET Tips and Tricks
QR:
So in order to have some insight I have installed Windows8 on a virtual machine and tried to implement a very basic app in C# , XAML and then in JavaScript using VS2011 and Expression Blend 5. Below are my first thoughts/encounters/guidelines on how this can go:
Installing Windows8
Initially go ahead and download the .iso image for the Windows8 Developer preview from this link. Download the 64bit edition with VS2011 and Expression Blend 5. My approach then was to download VirtualBox from this link ,install it and then do the following:
Run VirtualBox, select New, name the VM Windows8, select Microsoft Windows as your OS and Windows 7 64bit as the OS Version. Specify that the VM will use 4GB of memory and create a virtual HDD of fixed size of at least 30GB. Once the VM is created mount the .iso you have downloaded and Windows8 will be up and running in no time!
Developing the Unit Converter in Windows 8 (XAML + C#)
At that point I was ready for development. I switched to Desktop in Windows8 and started VS 2011. We will create a simple Unit Converter in XAML,C# so we select Visual C#/Windows Metro Style/Application:
QR:
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