Free Book Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

his free ebook provides comprehensive coverage of the platform for Windows Store apps. Since its second preview in August, we’ve added the remaining chapters on live tiles, notifications, background tasks, background transfers, networking, devices, printing, WinRT components, accessibility, localization, and the Windows Store itself. The final ebook contains 17 chapters. And of course all of the earlier chapters have also been reviewed and refined—over 800 pages in total, along with new and updated companion content!

It has been a wild ride these last few months to finish a book of this magnitude at the same time we were building up to the public release of Windows 8. At moments like these one would like to stop, let out a long “Whew!” and rest for a while. But truly, this is just the beginning! I primarily wrote this book for those developers

who have yet to delve into Windows 8 but who will certainly be very interested in the platform as it gains momentum with consumers in the coming year especially. There’s going to be a great market out there for the wonderful apps you’ll be creating, and it is my delight to help serve as a guide to that territory.

As I wrote in an earlier post, I’ve endeavored in this ebook to coalesce the collective experience of app builders who have been working with this platform from the beginning, as well as the insights and understanding of the Windows engineering team itself. I’ve also made a focused effort to highlight the amazing resources that are available in the Windows SDK samples, because they contain thousands and thousands of lines of code that you won’t have to write yourself once you know where to look! I’m hoping that my efforts in doing that research will save you the trouble and help you write some great apps in a short amount of time.

I’ll also reiterate that while this book focused on writing apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, many of the later chapters are really applicable to apps written in any language because they focus on the WinRT API rather than the details of the HTML/CSS presentation layer. Chapter 16, “WinRT Components,” in fact, focuses on using multiple languages within the same app, something that allows you to use the best language for any particular problem! Chapter 17, “Apps for Everyone: Localization, Accessibility, and the Windows Store,” also goes into detail on writing apps for global markets, employing tools like the Multilingual App Toolkit that isn’t specific to apps written in JavaScript.

In the end, then, there is much in this ebook that will be highly valuable to developers working on Windows 8 apps in whatever language. And again, the ebook is free, so there’s no excuse to not have it in your library.

Of course, there are many bits and details that have crossed my path since I had to hand off the text to Microsoft Press. In the months ahead, then, I will be sharing those on my blog, http://www.kraigbrockschmidt.com/luminarity, as well as in postings here with Microsoft Press. I look forward to the continued journey with you!

Below is the ebook’s Introduction, which gives you more details about the ebook. Enjoy, everybody!

Introduction

Welcome, my friends, to Windows 8! On behalf of the thousands of designers, program managers, developers, test engineers, and writers who have brought the product to life, I'm delighted to welcome you into a world of Windows Reimagined.

This theme is no mere sentimental marketing ploy, intended to bestow an aura of newness to something that is essentially unchanged, like those household products that make a big splash on the idea of "New and Improved Packaging!" No, Microsoft Windows truly has been reborn—after more than a quarter-century, something genuinely new has emerged.

I suspect—indeed expect—that you're already somewhat familiar with the reimagined user experience of Windows 8. You're probably reading this book, in fact, because you know that the ability of Windows 8 to reach across desktop, laptop, and tablet devices, along with the global reach of the Windows Store, will provide you with tremendous business opportunities, whether you're in business, as I like to say, for fame, fortune, fun, or philanthropy.

We'll certainly see many facets of this new user experience throughout the course of this book. Our primary focus, however, will be on the reimagined developer experience.

I don't say this lightly. When I first began giving presentations within Microsoft about building Windows Store apps, I liked to show a slide of what the world was like in the year 1985. It was the time of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Cold War tensions. It was the time of VCRs and the discovery of AIDS. It was when Back to the Future was first released, Michael Jackson topped the charts with Thriller, and Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple. And it was when software developers got their first taste of the original Windows API and the programming model for desktop applications.

The longevity of that programming model has been impressive. It's been in place for over a quarter-century now and has grown to become the heart of the largest business ecosystem on the planet. The API itself, known today as Win32, has also grown to become the largest on the planet! What started out on the order of about 300 callable methods has expanded three orders of magnitude, well beyond the point that any one individual could even hope to understand a fraction of it. I'd certainly given up such futile efforts myself.

So when I bumped into my old friend Kyle Marsh in the fall of 2009 just after Windows 7 had been released and heard from him that Microsoft was planning to reinvigorate native app development for Windows 8, my ears were keen to listen. In the months that followed I learned that Microsoft was introducing a completely new API called the Windows Runtime (or WinRT). This wasn't meant to replace Win32, mind you; desktop applications would still be supported. No, this was a programming model built from the ground up for a new breed of touch-centric, immersive apps that could compete with those emerging on various mobile platforms. It would be designed from the app developer's point of view, rather than the system's, so that key features would take only a few lines of code to implement rather than hundreds or thousands. It would also enable direct native app development in multiple programming languages. This meant that new operating system capabilities would surface to those developers without having to wait for an update to some intermediate framework. It also meant that developers who had experience in any one of those language choices would find a natural home when writing apps for Windows 8.

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