Acknowledgments

I’ve learned that a technical book like this is written by a team even though the author gets the credit. Joan Murray once again has helped drive this book to completion and provided incredible support and encouragement throughout the process. She works with an amazing team. Special thanks to development editor Ellie Bru for staying on top of every draft, figure, revision, edit, and feedback loop. Thanks to Lori Lyons and Christal White for keeping me consistent and correcting all of my bad grammar habits to help me present like a polished writer.

I have enormous gratitude to my co-workers at Wintellect for their support. Steve Porter and Todd Fine once again helped support my efforts to balance long evenings and early mornings writing with my daily activities. Jeffrey Richter and Jeff Prosise gave me plenty of insights and wisdom based on their years of writing incredible books before me. Jeffrey’s code samples and Jeff’s labs were priceless tools that helped me learn the new platform and evolve the scenarios I share in this book. John Garland was a companion on this journey of learning a new platform and technology, and served once again as a brilliant technical editor and helped me shape and organize the content.

Special thanks to Telerik for supporting me at many levels. I appreciate Jesse Liberty bringing me onto his podcast, Chris Sells for his assistance on the HTML and JavaScript side, and Michael Crump for not only supporting this book at multiple levels but also taking the time to provide valuable feedback as a technical editor.

Thanks to the Microsoft team who worked with me through multiple iterations of the Windows 8 platform, from Developer Preview to Consumer Preview, onto Release Preview and beyond. Thanks to Jaime Rodriguez, Tim Heuer, Joanna Mason, Jennifer Marsman, and Layla Driscoll for all of your knowledge and insights. David Kean, I appreciate you patiently explaining the portable class library at the MVP summit and all of your patience and support afterward. Daniel Plaisted, you’ve been a tremendous help along the way.

These acknowledgments wouldn’t be complete without a nod to my fellow MVPs and online supporters who have actively promoted and supported this book. Special thanks to Davide Zordan, Shawn Wildermuth, Jeff Albrecht, Roberto Baccari, David J. Kelley, Zubair Ahmed, and Ginny Caughey. Thanks to the Linked In .NET Users Group (LIDNUG), and especially Peter Shawn and Brian H. Madsen for your support and for providing me with a platform to share my excitement about Windows 8. Thanks to Chris Woodruff and Keith Elder for helping me get “deep fried” on their show.

Thanks to everyone who shared my tweets or visited the Facebook page for this book. Thanks to all of the early readers who provided feedback through the rough cuts of this book, and thanks to you, kind reader, for being you!

Last but certainly not least, thanks once again to my superstar wife and incredible daughter for understanding why Dad had to lock himself in the office late at night and in the very early hours of the morning. I couldn’t have done this without my girls!