Section VI
Windows Apps
The lessons in the first part of this book focused on Windows desktop applications because they're easy to get up and running. You don't need to take any special steps to register a desktop application, upload it to the Windows Store, or have it tested for safe use on a phone. By working with Windows Forms applications, you used those lessons to focus on using controls and writing C# code.
The lessons in this part of the book explain how you can use what you've learned to build Windows Store apps and Windows Phone apps. You build those kinds of applications using WPF windows and controls similar to those that you learned about in the first part of the book. You can edit them using the Window Designer and modify their XAML code. You can even place C# behind the controls much as you do in a WPF desktop application.
It would be nice if that were all there was to building these kinds of applications, but you have several other to handle overcome before you can publish the next paradigm-shifting mobile app. These lessons focus on those hurdles so you can get to the point where you can use the knowledge you already have about controls and C# code.
These are relatively new technologies so, unlike most of C#, they do change occasionally as Microsoft tweaks things such as Visual Studio, the Windows Store, the Windows Phone operating system, and the Windows operating system. That means some of the techniques described in these lessons may not work with every combination of those tools.
For example, you can't build Windows Phone 8 apps on Windows 7. For this book, I used Windows 8.1 and Visual Studio 2015. Other combinations may work but there may be some differences. (Fortunately most of the rest of the book doesn't depend on your version of Windows or Visual Studio. Most of the examples should work in Visual Studio 2008 if you type in the code.)
Building Windows Store and Phone apps is also a fairly involved topic so the few lessons included here can't cover every possible scenario. Taking full advantage of the special data, filesystem, and device capabilities provided by tablets and phones is fairly complicated so it's not covered here. These lessons do, however, provide enough information to get you started. They also explain where you can go online to find further information.