Windows App Developer Links - 2012-06-01

Windows 8

• Windows 8 Release Preview (Microsoft)

  • "It's Windows reimagined and reinvented from a solid core of Windows 7 speed and reliability. It's an all-new touch interface. It's a new Windows for new devices. And it's easy to try now—whether you're installing it for the first time, or moving from Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Get it now..."

• Delivering the Windows 8 Release Preview (Building Windows 8 Blog)

  • "Today, Windows 8 Release Preview is available for download in 14 languages. This is our final pre-release, and includes Windows 8, Internet Explorer 10, new Windows 8 apps for connecting to Hotmail, SkyDrive, and Messenger (and many more), and hundreds of new and updated apps in the Windows Store. Since our first preview release last September, millions of people now use the pre-release product on a daily basis and millions more have been taking it through its paces, totaling hundreds of millions of hours of testing. We genuinely appreciate the effort that so many have put into pre-release testing, and of course, we appreciate the feedback too. Direct feedback and feedback through usage contributed to hundreds of visible changes in the product and tens of thousands of under-the-hood changes..."

• Windows Release Preview: The Sixth IE10 Platform Preview (IEBlog)

  • "With IE10 in Windows 8, we reimagined the browser. We designed and built IE10 to be the best way to experience the full Web on Windows. Consumers can now enjoy more touch-friendly, fast and fluid Web applications with the updated IE10 engine included in the Windows Release Preview. This sixth Platform Preview of IE10 delivers improved performance and support for touch-first HTML5, as well as a new power-optimized, touch-friendly Adobe Flash Player that enables content on compatible Web sites to play in the Metro style Web browser. IE10 also sends the "Do Not Track" signal to Web sites by default to help consumers protect their privacy..."

Visual Studio 11

• Announcing the Release Candidate (RC) of Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 (Jason Zander's blog)

  • "I'm happy to announce the Release Candidate of Visual Studio 2012, Team Foundation Server 2012, and .NET Framework 4.5. You can find these releases available for download on our Visual Studio product website. In conjunction with today's Visual Studio release, Windows has made available a Windows 8 Release Preview. Please visit the Building Windows 8 blog for the official announcement by Steven Sinofsky. You can download the Windows 8 Release Preview bits here. In this post, I'll summarize the updates we've made in Visual Studio 2012 RC, since the beta. Given where we are in the product cycle, these updates are primarily final touches on existing features, responses to beta customer feedback, and improvements to performance. I've recorded a video, so you can also see some of these updates in action."

Expression Blend

• The Nitty Gritty—detailed List of What's New in Blend for Visual Studio 2012 RC (Microsoft Expression Blend Team Blog)

  • "If you've read our post Designing Metro style Apps in Blend and VS—What's new in RC? you'll know that we've made some pretty significant improvements in performance and stability, and we've invested in new features to increase productivity and usability. If you're curious for more details, read on. In this post you'll find the big list of what we've been working on between the Consumer Preview and the Release Candidate of Blend—for authoring both XAML and HTML5 apps."

• Designing Metro Style Apps in Blend and Vs: What's New in the RC? (Microsoft Expression Blend Team Blog)

  • "It's been a busy spring. After a lot of "yard work", we are shipping an updated version of all the visual authoring tools for Metro-style apps: Expression Blend with support for both HTML and XAML authoring, and the visual designer in Visual Studio 2012, based on Blend. As in previous releases, there is no more need to download Blend separately - it is now part of every VS download that targets any of the supported platforms, including Express for Windows 8, which is free, as well as Professional, and Ultimate. Or in other words, if you have Visual Studio 2012, you have Blend..."

Metro App Development

• What's changed for app developers since the Consumer Preview (Windows 8 app developer blog)

  • "It's that time again: With the new Release Preview and the new developer tools, Windows 8 is one step closer to final release. And just like in the Consumer Preview, our engineering team has been hard at work polishing the development platform to provide you with the best possible development experience on Windows 8. In this post I highlight a few of the new features that we've been working on and I also help get you started on migrating your existing Consumer Preview apps to the Release Preview. But first a few insights on the Windows development process..."

• Windows Store for Release Preview (Windows Store for developers)

  • "Welcome to the Release Preview Windows Store. In this post, we'll describe a few of the improvements we've made to the user experience. We'll also touch on a few updates that we've made to our app certification policy, in an effort to ensure guidelines and expectations remain clear. And, of course, we want to encourage you to dive in and explore the hundreds of preview apps currently in the catalog—including the first desktop app listings. These apps are just the beginning—we'll continue to add apps during the Release Preview timeframe. Ted Dworkin, Partner Director of Program Management, authored this post."

Apps & Code to Look At

• Callisto: A toolkit for XAML Metro style apps (Tim Heuer)

  • "With the announcement of the Windows 8 Release Preview and matching Visual Studio 2012 RC I'm pleased to share some work that has been a result of my own personal app building, collaborating with some friends during their app building as well as porting some helpful projects that I've found helpful in my development. Introducing Callisto, a toolkit of sorts for XAML Metro style apps. When starting my own app building for the Consumer Preview, I realized there were some experiences and common things that I wanted to implement that weren't existing controls in a way that I could easily re-use my efforts across app to app that I was building. The foundation building blocks in the platform were there of course, as was a few existing Open Source projects that I could leverage (yay Open Source!). I refactored the combination of these things into a single toolkit that I've been using for my apps."

Downloads

• Windows 8 Release Preview ISO images (Windows)

  • "Windows 8 Release Preview ISO files (.iso) are provided as an alternative to using Windows 8 Release Preview Setup. If you are on a PC running Windows and want to install the release preview on another partition, another PC, or a virtual machine, we recommend you download Windows 8 Release Preview Setup and use the built-in tools for converting an ISO image into installation media, such as a DVD or USB bootable flash drive. You can find additional information, including a list of supported upgrades, in the FAQ."

• Downloads for Metro style app development (Microsoft Dev Center)

  • "Download the tools and SDK, Download Windows 8 Release Preview, Related tools, SDKs, and downloads"

• Visual Studio 2012 RC downloads (Visual Studio)

  • "Install and try Visual Studio 2012 RC today and seize the future of development."

• Visual Studio 2012 RC ISO Image Download Links (Windows Valley)

  • "With the advent of the Windows 8 Release Preview, Microsoft has just gone live with the download links for release candidate version of Visual Studio 2012 formally known as "Visual Studio 11?. The release has a lot of changes compared to the beta version that was first released in late February. For your conveience, we have grabbed direct download links from official website. And you can download Visual Studio 2012 RC in different formats from the links given below..."