as Microsoft are releasing a tablet later this year, with a new operating system I was wondering whether we can already create apps for this platform and have them on the market place prior to release?
If this is the case where could I get my hands on the API's needed to go about creating a touch application in XNA for the upcoming windows 8 tablet.
Right now it looks like XNA applications will not be directly supported by the marketplace (source); however, MonoGame games are able to get into the Marketplace. This is an open-source alternative to XNA.
At this point, consider XNA to be around for a few more years but not directly supported in anything other than what it currently works on Xbox, Windows Phone, and Windows but not on the Windows 8 Marketplace.
Related
In Visual Studio I am trying to decide which type of application I should start with. I want to make it available to as many devices as I can.
If I make a Windows desktop application (.NET/WPF), I could convert it to a UWP but it only targets desktop applications, which is pointless device-wise.
But if I make a UWP, it would work with Microsoft devices, but not ones running a Windows older than Windows 10. A lot of people still use older versions of Windows, and I would rather make a Windows desktop application than limit the use to a specific version of Windows.
It would also be cool to be able to make it work on other devices like Android.
QUESTIONS: Is there a way to convert a Desktop application to a Universal UWP (with or without the code)? Is there a way to convert a Universal UWP to a Desktop application (or make it run on older Windows machines)? If not, what would be the best application type and why?
Also, is there a different application type I should use instead that I'm not thinking of?
NOTE: Microsoft Project Centennial converts Desktop applications to UWP's, but they only work on desktop machines.
I would go UWP and use Xamarin forms if I were you.
Using Xamarin you can write the one UWP app and deploy to Windows, Android, and iOS.
You answered most of your question yourself already. You have the following options (considering you want to continue using your .NET/XAML skillset as you mention WPF and are not looking into a web alternative):
Write a desktop app in WPF: you want to support Windows 7 or need features that are currently not available yet in UWP (some APIs, sandboxed UWP, ..). As you mentioned, you can use the Desktop Bridge to bring the app to the Windows 10 store as well with the downside of not running on mobile, HoloLens, Xbox (as of today). Then again, WPF doesn't run on those platforms either.
Write the app from scratch in UWP: run on Windows 10 on all available platforms. Yes, you will leave the Windows 7 users in the cold but not that Windows 7 is already in the extended support block so people will have to upgrade at some point.
Write the app from scratch with Xamarin.Forms, creating a single app that runs on Windows 7 (WPF), UWP, Android and iOS. Note that this is a somewhat different XAML dialect right now, but XAML Standard is working on unifying the dialects in the future.
A bit more work is to share most of your code with .NET Standard or PCL libraries and write multiple native UI's on top of it (which can be done with Xamarin).
If you're looking for longer term support pick either UWP (the way forward for Windows) or Xamarin.Forms.
Try Microsoft's Desktop Bridge tool for UWP. Using the Desktop Bridge, you can gradually migrate your code to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) to reach every Windows 10 device, including phones, Xbox One, and HoloLens
Using Desktop bridge tool, you can
Convert MSI to APPX package
Upload your Desktop app (after conversion to APPX package) to Store
Take advantage of UWP features like Live tiles, Push Notification and many more)
And, for Android and iOS app try Xamarin. UWP project cannot converted to xamarin project. You've to write seperate project. I recommend you to try Xamarin.Forms which allows you to boild UWP, Android and iOS app with shared code.
If I target WP7 and WP8.1 then:
Will WP8.0 devices be able to download the WP7 version?
Will WP8.1 devices will get the WP8.1 version right ?
I'm developing an app I would like to target WP 7.1, 8.0 and 8.1.
I am thinking about targeting the 8.1 sdk for WP8. I am just not sure if that's a good idea right now as not all devices have gotten the 8.1 phone update.
According to my knowledge:
If your app is targeted to WP7 then it will be surely available for
Both the WP8 and WP8.1 until and unless you have not provided the
separate package for the later ones. so your first question's ans is
Yes
You said thinking about targeting the 8.1 sdk for WP8 But before
making this point explore that - Is it really worth or fruitful to do that
because what is New to WP8.1 will not be available for WP8 so
what's pushing you for doing it.
As you already mentioned that WP8.1 devices are very few. I think this should not be the point of making decision. What your decision should depend on is - Are you going to use new features of WP8.1 in your app or not. If you are doing then you should also target WP8.1.
Because in the end every single user should have better experience of your App.
If you are trying to use common code for the WP8.1 and Windows 8.1 then you can also check for Universal Apps and Difference between WP8.1 Apps using Win-rt Apis and WP8.1 Silverlight apps because their are significant differences between the later ones.
I have some apps developed with Windows Phone SDK 7.1 which undoubtedly run on Windows Phone 8 without any change.
My question is the other way. If I upgrade my app WP7 apps to WP8, meaning I make necessary namespace changes and compile them with WP8 SDK, will they still run on WP7? - I guess no.
What should be my strategy to have apps that run on both of the OS and still I should be able to use advanced functionality (if it runs on WP8) that WP8 offers (like Wallet, NFC, Nokia Imaging and more stuff like that)?
Is that I need to create 2 separate versions of each app? One will run on WP7 built with WP7 SDK and will not have advanced functionality like Wallet, NFC Sharing. The other app will have all of them and built with WP8. Will they be two separate apps in Windows Phone Marketplace?
Windows Phone 7 apps will run on Windows Phone 8, but the reverse is not possible. The former is called backwards compatibility.
If you want to support WP 7 OS, you need to maintain two different applications and submit them independently to the store.
This question already exists:
Windows phone emulator issue in windows 7 [closed]
Closed 9 years ago.
I am completely a newbie in Windows phone app development.
I followed this tutorial to develop my 1st Windows Phone app. When I am ready to run my 1st app, I selected Debug->Start debugging on the top toolbar of visual studio 2010, but I got the following dialog:
It complains that my working machine(Lenovo W510) does not have the graphics processing unit. What can I do for this if I would like to run my app on a emulator?
When clicking on "Yes", it should launch the emulator anyways but with limited functionality. (no extensive 3D, things like that)
If it does not succeed in launching the emulator then you will have to find a system with better graphics capabilities. However, considering the W510 runs an nVidia Quadro FX 880M, I'm pretty sure it should be able to run the emulator just fine. Have you checked your GPU driver yet?
I had the exact same issue with the SDK on an older machine. For XNA and otherwise smooth effects / transitions in Silverlight projects the emulator requires Windows Phone Emulator requires a DirectX 10 or above capable graphics card with a WDDM 1.1 driver.
The issue I had is that my graphics card (some integrated Intel) didn't have WDDM 1.1 drivers. In this case, if you are looking to develop XNA projects, the only two solutions are
upgrade your graphics card
or buy a real device on which you can test.
Since the release (and in some cases prior to) the release of Windows Phone 8, several WP7 apps on the marketplace have had updates that simply state "Updated for Windows Phone 8."
What does this mean, exactly? Because the marketplace allows multiple XAP uploads, is it a new XAP for WP8 but the app only allows a single description (thus "updated for WP8")? If so, does the marketplace push an update for WP7 even if the WP7 XAP hasn't changed?
Or, are there changes to the 7.1.1 SDK that optimize for WP7 apps on WP8? If so, could you provide a link outlining this? (I did a search, but all I could find is the 7.1.1 update targets 256MB devices.)
Bottom line, although I know WP7 apps are compatible on WP8, is there something I should be doing with my WP7 apps for WP8 while still functional on WP7?
Take a look at this, seems to be an issue that is being worked on at the moment.
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/wpsubmit/thread/789b3017-d242-4151-9d0b-84c85c4b3c24
These tags of "Updated for Windows Phone 8" don't necessarily mean that the app has been upgraded to a Windows Phone 8 application. It could also mean that the developer has tested and fixed bugs that can break functionality for a Windows Phone 7 app in Windows Phone 8. For example, I found two bugs involving local storage in Windows phone 7 projects when running on Windows Phone 8. Therefore, I had to make some adjustments to get my project running 100% on Windows Phone 8 (but its still a WP7.1 project). For more information on bugs and "quirks" when running WP7.1 projects on Windows Phone 8 here is a link to Microsoft's information.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/jj206947(v=vs.105).aspx