Windows 8 Dev - 2 weeks
Well, I've now been working on Windows 8 for roughly two weeks, maybe more, but only about 2 weeks of actual code. I have to say, I'm still enjoying it. I'm sure if I wasn't doing Silverlight and WPF prior I would hate it as I remember what the learning curve was like coming from WinForms to WPF. But it is truly amazing how much of that knowledge is transferable. If you're a developer and done Silverlight or WPF or WP7 development you should feel fairly much at home here. And I think that there are a lot of interesting new things to play here like the charms and contracts.
The one area I continue to have beef with is toast notifications and live tiles. For those not familiar, the way to work with these objects is to retrieve a pre-formatted Xml template, then use the Xml libraries to edit the elements. And what happens if you screw up? Nothing. No toast/tile and no error. When I saw them talk about this at Build I was seriously hoping someone would wake and realize how stupid this is, but since I'm working on the RTM OS and a final release of Visual Studio 2012 it isn't looking good. This is just a completely silly oversight. Despite requiring you to manually manipulate Xml files and hamstringing you by not providing feedback on error you are only able to select from about a dozen predefined templates for each. There is ABSOLUTELY no reason why there shouldn't object libraries for this functionality. If there were hundreds or thousands of permutations or you weren't constrained to the pre-built templates there would be SOME justification to this approach. But that isn't the case.
Anyway, this is a minor beef. My first side project is to build a library that provides some semblance of a proper Object Oriented approach to Toasts first and then Tiles second. I know that there is some code out there already that basically does this for you from a number of sources, but typically embedded in other projects. And I like to do things my own way. I might post it up on codeplex or sourceforge later.
Back to development experience, I won't talk about specifics but so far I've had a chance to work with the item views, group views, toasts, sharing contract and probably a few other things. Worked with snapped views and rotations. And I'm finding everything easy. Easier than they were on Windows Phone and where there are comparisons easier than they were in WPF and Silverlight. Though I highly recommend using the templates. At least once. For instance, many of the more complex page types from the template, when you add them to your project, it will also add a bunch of dependent files like the LayoutAwarePage class. This little thing is what made handling all of the size and orientation changes so simple.
Next week I'll be working on background tasks, tile badges and maybe even, if I can find a good use case, secondary tiles. I've already started looking at the background task stuff and it looks like it will be fairly easy. From memory, the tile badges is going to be more Xml stupidity but should be simple enough. I haven't actually looked much into the secondary tile stuff, but what I saw actually looked remarkably simple as well. All in all, this is shaping up to a be total success. Still handily kicking Android's butt in the development environment department.
The one area I continue to have beef with is toast notifications and live tiles. For those not familiar, the way to work with these objects is to retrieve a pre-formatted Xml template, then use the Xml libraries to edit the elements. And what happens if you screw up? Nothing. No toast/tile and no error. When I saw them talk about this at Build I was seriously hoping someone would wake and realize how stupid this is, but since I'm working on the RTM OS and a final release of Visual Studio 2012 it isn't looking good. This is just a completely silly oversight. Despite requiring you to manually manipulate Xml files and hamstringing you by not providing feedback on error you are only able to select from about a dozen predefined templates for each. There is ABSOLUTELY no reason why there shouldn't object libraries for this functionality. If there were hundreds or thousands of permutations or you weren't constrained to the pre-built templates there would be SOME justification to this approach. But that isn't the case.
Anyway, this is a minor beef. My first side project is to build a library that provides some semblance of a proper Object Oriented approach to Toasts first and then Tiles second. I know that there is some code out there already that basically does this for you from a number of sources, but typically embedded in other projects. And I like to do things my own way. I might post it up on codeplex or sourceforge later.
Back to development experience, I won't talk about specifics but so far I've had a chance to work with the item views, group views, toasts, sharing contract and probably a few other things. Worked with snapped views and rotations. And I'm finding everything easy. Easier than they were on Windows Phone and where there are comparisons easier than they were in WPF and Silverlight. Though I highly recommend using the templates. At least once. For instance, many of the more complex page types from the template, when you add them to your project, it will also add a bunch of dependent files like the LayoutAwarePage class. This little thing is what made handling all of the size and orientation changes so simple.
Next week I'll be working on background tasks, tile badges and maybe even, if I can find a good use case, secondary tiles. I've already started looking at the background task stuff and it looks like it will be fairly easy. From memory, the tile badges is going to be more Xml stupidity but should be simple enough. I haven't actually looked much into the secondary tile stuff, but what I saw actually looked remarkably simple as well. All in all, this is shaping up to a be total success. Still handily kicking Android's butt in the development environment department.
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