An Overview of the Windows Phone 8 SDK
It didn’t take long after the introduction of Windows Runtime (WinRT, the set of APIs that allow Windows Store apps to communicate with the Windows 8 operating system), for Microsoft to unveil the next generation of its mobile operating system, Windows Phone 8, which conveniently includes some of the APIs coming directly from WinRT. It’s easy to imagine the APIs merging together at some point, as that would make writing applications for on-the-go devices such as tablets and mobile phones much easier. | " |
It’s easy to imagine the APIs merging together at some point, as that would make writing applications for on-the-go devices such as tablets and mobile phones much easier.
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This article discusses the improvements in the new Windows Phone 8 SDK, walks through the requirements to build an app on this new platform, and explores several great new features in this platform. Three New Features in Windows Phone 8 SDK I think it’s important to lay a solid foundation by understanding several new features included in the SDK before digging into the bits and writing code. Some of these features include - New tile sizes and templates that let your app use the new small and wide tile sizes along with a couple of new templates
- A lock-screen background image provider and the ability to choose to add your app to the lock screen notification area
- Advancements in speech recognition that make the app read text to you as well as understand text that you speak to it
I have specifically targeted these three features as demos, as I’m sure you want practical examples that you can use in your next real-world app. This article barely scratches the surface of what is included in the Windows Phone 8 SDK. For a comprehensive list, please visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windowsphone/develop/jj206940(v=vs.105).aspx Getting Your Development Environment Up and Running Before getting started, you need to download the following items: After you grab the necessary files, it’s worth noting that the processor must support “Second Level Address Translation” (SLAT) and Hyper-V needs to be turned on. If your processor does not support SLAT, you won’t be able to run the emulator. You can, however, deploy it to a physical device. If you have a Windows Phone 8 device, you no longer have to install additional software (like Zune) to register it. Just plug your Windows Phone 8 device into an available USB port and open the Windows Phone Developer Registration program. You can find this application after you have installed the Windows Phone 8 SDK. You’ll need to enter a valid username and password that’s associated with your Windows Phone developer account. After this is complete, your phone is unlocked and you can deploy or sideload applications to it. Windows Phone 8 Templates in Visual Studio 2012 Now that you have the necessary tools to begin building a Windows Phone 8 app, let’s begin by launching Visual Studio 2012 from the Start Screen and selecting Templates ->“Visual C# -> Windows Phone as shown in Figure 1. Please note the two highlighted templates, as I will discuss them shortly. 
Figure 1: These are the default templates for a Windows Phone app. The templates that ship in the box are: - Windows Phone App: A project for creating a basic Windows Phone application
- Windows Phone Databound App: A project for creating a Windows Phone application that uses list and navigation controls with a basic Model-View-ViewModel architecture
- Windows Phone Class Library: A project for creating a Windows Phone class library
- Windows Phone Panorama App: A project for creating a Windows Phone application that uses the Panorama control. The Panorama control is a long horizontal canvas that extends beyond a single screen.
- Windows Phone Pivot App: A project for creating a Windows Phone application that uses the Pivot control. The Pivot control lets you switch between views or pages within the app.
- Windows Phone XAML and Direct3D App (8.0 SDK Only): A project for creating a Windows Phone managed application with native components
- Windows Phone XAML and XNA App (7.1 SDK Only): A project for creating a Windows Phone XAML application that’s capable of rendering graphics using the XNA Framework
- Windows Phone HTML5 App: A project for creating a Windows Phone application that uses primarily HTML content
- Windows Phone Audio Playback Agent: A class library project for creating a background agent to play audio
- Windows Phone Audio Streaming Agent: A class library project for creating a background agent to stream audio
- Windows Phone Scheduled Task Agent: A class library project for creating a background agent to perform a periodic or resource-intensive task
As you can see in Figure 1, only two new templates are provided with the SDK: Windows Phone XAML and Direct3D App and Windows Phone HTML5 App. In both templates, you can see that Microsoft added support for native code. The Windows Phone XAML and Direct3D App template comes with two projects upon first launch; the Windows Phone 8 project and a native (C++) app. What makes this interesting is that you can now reuse a majority of native code that was written ages ago, which will prove especially meaningful for those wanting to port games over to Windows Phone 8 without converting it to managed code, like C# or Visual Basic (VB). | " |
What makes this interesting is that you can now reuse a majority of native code that was written ages ago, which will prove especially meaningful for those wanting to port games over to Windows Phone 8 without converting it to managed code, like C# or Visual Basic (VB).
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The Windows Phone HTML5 App template is a WebBrowser control hosted in an XAML page. The template comes with an HTML folder to display HTML5 content, complete with an index.html and style sheet that resembles the native look and feel of the Windows Phone OS. This template has no relation to WinJS that Windows Store app developers are used to. |