Beginning Windows® 8 Application Development
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Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
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To Henriett, Eszter, and Réka. Thank you for your love and support.
—István Novák
To Adrienn. Thank you for being so supportive and for always standing behind me.
—Zoltán Arvai
To all my friends and family who endured while I was writing the umpteenth “last” paragraph for the day—at 10 p.m….on our holiday.
—Dávid Fülöp
Credits
Acquisitions Editor
Mary James
Project Editor
Kevin Shafer
Technical Editor
Alex Golesh
Production Editor
Kathleen Wisor
Copy Editor
Kim Cofer
Editorial Manager
Mary Beth Wakefield
Freelancer Editorial Manager
Rosemarie Graham
Associate Director of Marketing
David Mayhew
Marketing Manager
Ashley Zurcher
Business Manager
Amy Knies
Production Manager
Tim Tate
Vice President and Executive Group Publisher
Richard Swadley
Vice President and Executive Publisher
Neil Edde
Associate Publisher
Jim Minatel
Project Coordinator, Cover
Katie Crocker
Compositor
Jeff Lytle, Happenstance Type-O-Rama
Proofreaders
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Sarah Kaikini, Word One
Louise Watson, Word One
Indexer
Johnna VanHoose Dinse
Cover Designer
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Cover Image
© Donall O Cleirigh/iStockPhoto
About the Authors
István Novák is an associate and the chief technology consultant of SoftwArt, a small Hungarian IT consulting company. He works as a software architect and community evangelist. In the last 20 years, he participated in more than 50 enterprise software development projects. In 2002, he co-authored the first Hungarian book about .NET development. In 2007, he was awarded with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) title, and in 2011 he became a Microsoft Regional Director. As the main author, he contributed in writing the Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 Six-In-One book (Indianapolis: Wiley, 2010), and he is the author of Beginning Visual Studio LightSwitch Development (Indianapolis: Wiley, 2011). He holds master’s degree from the Technical University of Budapest, Hungary, and also has a doctoral degree in software technology. He lives in Dunakeszi, Hungary, with his wife and two teenage daughters. He is a passionate scuba diver. You may have a good chance of meeting him underwater at the Red Sea in any season of the year.
György Balássy teaches web development as a lecturer at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He is a founding member of the local MSDN Competence Center (MSDNCC), having an important role in evangelizing the .NET platform as a speaker, book author, and consultant. Balássy provided leadership in the foundation of the Hungarian .NET community as a key evangelist on Microsoft events, technical forums, and as the head of the Portal Technology Group in the MSDNCC. He is a regular speaker on academic and industrial events, presenting in-depth technical sessions on .NET, ASP.NET, Office development, and ethical hacking, with which he won the Best Speaker and the Most Valuable Professional awards in SharePoint, ASP.NET, and IIS multiple times. He was also selected to be a member of the ASPInsiders group. Since 2005, Balássy has been the Microsoft Regional Director in Hungary. You can visit his blog at http://gyorgybalassy.wordpress.com or reach him at [email protected].
Zoltán Arvai is a software engineer specializing in client application development and front-end architectures. He’s very passionate about user experience and next-generation user interfaces. He’s been a freelancer the last seven years, working on several .NET projects, mainly in the enterprise software development world. Arvai was honored with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award in 2009, and has been recognized three times as a Silverlight MVP. He is a frequent speaker at local Microsoft events. Arvai has co-authored Hungarian books about Silverlight 4.0 and Windows Phone 7.5. He lives in Budapest, Hungary, where he enjoys playing jazz on his old piano, and is a big fan of meeting different cultures all over the world.
Dávid Fülöp is a Hungarian software developer who spent the past decade building .NET and, later, Silverlight applications. Apart from writing code and writing books about writing code, he’s been a freelance software development trainer teaching developers of various companies, and giving lectures to college students at the University of Óbuda. Also, he’s a recurring presenter at local Microsoft-related developer events. In his free time, he does karate, plays online, and furiously tries to learn the Klingon language.
About the Technical Editor
Alex Golesh is a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Sela (located in Seattle). He is an international expert who specializes in Windows 8, Windows Phone, XNA, Silverlight, and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Golesh is currently consulting for various enterprises worldwide, architecting and developing Windows 8, Windows Phone, Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and Smart Client solutions. He has been developing training samples and courses for various product groups at Microsoft (in Redmond, WA). He conducts lectures and workshops, and leads projects worldwide in the fields of Windows 8, Windows Phone, RIA, and Smart Client. He has conducted Windows Phone 7, WPF, and Silverlight trainings in Israel, India, Sweden, and Poland as a part of the Microsoft Early Adoption Program. He has received recognition as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for four years in a row.
Acknowledgments
Writing this book was a great adventure! Just a few weeks after I had completed my previous book, Paul Reese called and asked me to participate in a book about Windows 8. I did not hesitate, and immediately said “yes.” I’m happy that Paul took a chance on me again, and hope he’ll be content with the result.
This book wouldn’t have been completed on time without Kevin Shafer and Mary E. James. Kevin not only did amazing editorial work, but also undertook the burdens of adjusting the book again and again as Microsoft changed the terminology of Windows 8. Mary always kept the book on the right track, and encouraged us when we had to revise previously completed chapters because of breaking changes in a new release of Windows 8.
I’d also like to thank Kim Cofer for thoroughly reading the manuscript, removing ambiguities, and translating complex paragraphs to simple and tangle-free sentences. Alex Golesh not only reviewed the book from technical point of view, but also suggested great ideas to make the exercises in this book easier to follow and understand. I’m very grateful for his help.
I would not have been able to create this book without such a great authoring team. So, I’d like to thank György, Zoltán, and Dávid for adding their hearts and souls to this adventure. It was great to work with you!
Finally, I owe many kisses to my wife and daughters for letting me spend so many hours in my study, working on this book. I’ll keep my promise, and we’ll spend the remaining weekends of this summer together.
—István Novák
Writing this book was really difficult, but definitely one of the most exciting tasks I’ve ever completed. Windows 8 is so exciting, and there is so much to tell and write about the possibilities and brilliant technological solutions that it seemed almost impossible to fit all this information into a single book.
I would have never succeeded without the help of István Novák, Kevin Shafer, and Mary E. James. Thank you for leading me on the right path with my chapters to make this book as awesome as it has turned out to be.
I’d also like to thank György and Dávid for contributing to this book, and putting all the hard work into this project. It was really great and fun to work with you guys!
I’d also like to thank Kim Cofer and Alex Golesh, who thoroughly read my chapters and made sure that the silly mistakes I made would never see the sunlight. Thank you for all your suggestions and your hard work.
I’m very grateful for the chance to work on this project. It was a real adventure. Thank you all for your help.
Last, but not least, Adrienn, thank you for supporting me all the way, and accepting that I couldn’t be with you on those long nights. I promise I’ll make it up to you.
—Zoltán Arvai
First of all, I’d like to thank Zoltán and István for inviting me on board to participate in writing my first non-Hungarian book. You do know how much fun it was! Thank you for guiding me, and keeping me from making all my sample apps Trek- or South Park-related. I’d also like to thank György, who made the book complete with his invaluable chapters.
I’d like to thank to the editorial crew at Wiley: Kevin Shafer for the incredibly insightful advice on making every page better, and Mary E. James for helping me with the book writing process. Kim Cofer deserves all my appreciation for making my English-like sentences really English. The book’s readability improved a lot thanks to Kim. Last, but not least, I’d like to thank Alex Golesh, our Technical Editor, who was always there to make the book thorough by providing another vital point of view on every matter.
Finally, I‘d like to thank my parents, Gyuri and Zsuzsa, and my girlfriend, Dóri, for their support while I was living like a hermit for days, living my life aloof with my laptops when a deadline was near. I hope you can forgive the short bursts of complete lack of interest in socializing, sleeping or eating, just like our cats, Seven and Cica could.
—Dávid Fülöp