SUMMARY

This chapter explained how to create the MetroBones Metro-style application. It explained the purposes of the Logo.png, SmallLogo.png, SplashScreen.png, and StoreLogo.png files, and explained how to modify them for your applications. The chapter also explained how to use the Manifest Designer to set application properties such as its initial orientation and a wide logo file.

The chapter then explained how to use a Viewbox to enlarge a basic fixed-size interface so it can fill Metro devices of various sizes. This technique is not as flexible as using Grid and other arranging controls to fill the available space on different devices, but it is much easier and works quite well for an application such as MetroBones, which doesn’t display large amounts of data.

The chapter explained how to read resource files in Metro-style applications. Because many Metro file processing methods work asynchronously, the program uses the Await keyword to wait for them to complete.

Finally, the chapter explained how to test Metro applications in the Microsoft Windows Simulator or on the local machine.

The MetroBones program demonstrates some useful techniques but it barely touches on the things you can do with Metro-style applications. Some devices that support Metro provide all sorts of other features such as cameras, accelerometers, orientation sensors, geolocation, and multi-touch input. The MetroBones program doesn’t demonstrate any of that. Those topics and many others are outside the scope of this book. For more information, search the Internet or look for a book that focuses on Windows Metro programming. Many of these concepts are also supported by Windows Phone programs so you may also get useful information by learning about Windows Phone programming.

The following list gives some links that you may find helpful in Metro-style programming:

• Metro Style Apps
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/windows/apps
• Create your first Metro style app using C# or Visual Basic
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/apps/br211380.aspx
• Metro style apps, downloads for developers
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/windows/apps/br229516
• Windows 8 Metro style app samples
  http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/site/search

The chapters in Part II of this book deal mostly with basic programming tasks. They explain how to select and use controls, use Visual Basic syntax to perform tasks such as looping and error handling, and use LINQ to simplify complex selection and ordering tasks.

The chapters in Part III deal with the higher-level concepts of object-oriented programming (OOP). Chapter 22, “OOP Concepts,” introduces fundamental object-oriented concepts that make it easier to build and maintain complex applications.