Windows 8 Camp Report

    Last Friday, Microsoft at the conference Windows 8 Camp presented a new Windows and talked about its features, development tools and the new application store Windows Store. Our head of the mobile development department, Denis Konovalov, attended this event and wrote a short report (by the way, he also conducted a Twitter broadcast via @ App2Top ). We offer to read to everyone who is interested in developing for mobile platforms.

    Windows 8 is positioned as a revolutionary cross-platform operating system. On desktops, it will replace Windows 7, and tablets will also be equipped with it. Windows Phone 7 remains the solution for phones, as The minimum screen resolution requirements for running Windows 8 are 1024x768.

    The concept of the Metro interface and the tiles is really interesting. Who has not yet seen - look for a presentation on the internet. Window titles, menus, close buttons - everything remains in the past. Equalization of content: now the application occupies the entire screen! The minimalistic interface design, clear guidelines on the number of fonts used in the application, the location of the interface elements and the direction of their scrolling (along the wide side of the device) make us take a fresh look at the application design. Fortunately, this does not apply to games, so their interface under Windows 8 will remain unchanged. :) An example of this is Cut the Rope, which already exists in the Windows Store and is available for download as a Metro application.

    For developers, Microsoft offers the WinRT interface, the use of which equalizes C ++, .NET and JavaScript code in performance. It will be necessary to develop for 8-ku in Visual Studio 11, the beta version of which is also already available for download. The first reviews of the new studio can be read on Habré here and here .

    Of the technical details, I liked the new mechanism of asynchronous calls, which significantly increases the readability of the code. In a nutshell: the method described as async, when invoked, runs in a separate thread. After it, the next line you can put the await block, which will only start after async has worked. Everything is simple and clear!

    Metro applications can only be purchased through the Windows Store. Moreover, the user will be forced to learn how to use the store from the very first minutes of working in Windows 8, because in the system itself, as I understand it, there will be only 3 pre-installed applications - IE, desktop and the store. Everything else - download and buy for health.

    Now the store is working in test mode in 5 countries as different as possible (USA, Germany, India, something else). You can register and release the application there only by special invitation. All applications are still free and pass strict face control, the quality of applications in the store by the time the official version of Windows 8 is launched will be one of the "chips" of the system.

    Another interesting thing about the store: the minimum price is now set at $ 1.49; there is an automatic time limit for the trial version of the application (1, 7, 14, etc. days) - and this is set from the admin panel, you do not need to write code; The pricing policy is aimed at making the application profit - after crossing the threshold of $ 25K per month, the application developer begins to receive not the standard 70%, but as much as 80%! However, the answer to many questions about the store was “not yet known,” so we are following the news on the App2Top.ru portal !

    Summing up: the new store in Windows 8 is a great opportunity to reach new users. Windows 7 now costs 500M users - this market is bigger than iOS and Android combined! And each of them has the technical ability to upgrade to Windows 8 (what can I say, more than 1M people downloaded the Consumer Preview version in a day).

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