Windows Store Development Resources

I’ve lamented before how it is hard to find information about details of developing for Windows 8. It’s great that we can use front end technologies to build apps, but the fact that there are three languages to develop in divides the available information.

I am leading a workshop session (Taking the Responsive Web to Windows 8) for SXSW 2014. While working on my slides and a sample project, I am trying to find details that I’ve never seen or found once a long time ago without remembering the source. Every once in a while I find the right search term (Windows 8? Windows Store? WinJS? IE 11? The Non-XAML Way of Doing Something?) and stumble upon something great.

I plan to write more about Windows over the coming months, and will try to point to these great sources I find.

I knew I read somewhere that IE does not follow the “use 3D transforms to trigger hardware accelerated transitions” model that Webkit has been using for years. Before putting this in my talk I needed the source. After 4 hours of searching, I found a great description of Performance with Windows Store apps. Among other good information, animations are discussed. In short, any transition on opacity or transforms (3D or 2D) will cause the animation to run independently of the main UI thread.

The second resource I found today is one that I surely should have found sooner. David Washington discusses seemingly-not-well-documented pieces of IE/WinJS/Windows like chained panning/zooming and snap points. I’m just beginning to review these, but they look informative.