Visual Studio for Building Windows 8 Apps

Here is a compact yet deep technical examination of the IDE to develop Windows 8 apps featuring the new Metro end-user interface introduced by Windows Phone 7.

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Download and Install Visual Studio

DOWNLOAD: Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows 8 (file WPexpress.exe). is Microsoft's free version of Visual Studio.

This is different than evaluation version of Visual Studio 2012.

REMINDER: Visual Studio 2012 is also called version 11.0.

NOTE: VS 11.0 is a Win32 app, thus installed to the Program Files (x86) folder on 64-bit machines.

Open App (Visual Studio)

DO THIS: Hold down the Windkey and press Q (for Quartermaster).
Press Esc to dismiss the search or
press PgDn to look for it or
type VS to display Visual Studio and press Enter.

If you would like to copy from the sample app code you're analyzing and paste into your own program, open another instance of Visual Studio:

DO THIS: Invoke a second instance, right-click on the app icon and select from the App Bar Open new Window.

What is Microsoft’s intent regarding third party compilers targeting the Windows Runtime? Embarcadero was unable to target Windows Runtime with its Delphi compiler because of system APIs that only the Visual C++ runtime is allowed to call.

Sample Project Templates in Visual Studio 2012 (version 11)

By default, VS puts new projects into folder:

C:\user\%USERNAME%\documents\visual studio 2012\Projects

echo C:\user\%USERNAME%\documents\visual studio 2012\Projects

JavasScript Template projects available by default in VS11:

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