Though it is trivial to create a Windows 8 Metro styled app, converting from WP7 is not really simple.Existing WP7 apps will be recompiled to work under Metro, but nothing has been said whether this is a one time event or the developers will have the oppurtunity to continue to modify the WP7 code. A method for converting WP7 to W(P)8 would be ideal, but not realistic. Not all WP7 features have an equivalent W(P)8 feature. There is no simple swap A for B. There is a variety of Bs that could replace any given A. What would be useful is a series of articles on how specific features used in WP7 can be implemented in W(P)8 and which are prefered and which should be avoided.
So, What should such a series of articles cover? (If anyone actually uses theses ideas for a book, I want a complimentary autographed copy)
- Converting Res to ResX resource files and how they are different. (I thought I would start with a simple one)
- What are frames?
- Navigation. It is similar to WP7, but there are some differences. There are various ways a click event can be created in XAML and C#.
- How are charms used?
- How are AppBars used?
- Is there a standard for implementing Help? HTML is a great way for implementing large blocks of formatted text, but is it the best way?
- How do you replace Wrappanels?
- How do you replace Pivots?
- How to use CommandUI properly.
- How do implement sorts? Same layout, same information, different sort.
- How do you handle CRUD?
Remember, this is supposed to be an aid for helping WP7 devs convert their apps to W(P)8.
John Marshall… Visio MVP Visio.MVPs.org
john Visio MVP 
Thanks for the note John! About the only one I know of (which isn’t much :>) is the CRUD part, and that’s MVVM using EF. Pretty easy answer that only scratches the surface of another beast to learn! DOH! I’m stuck with the EF part right now, soon moving over to mvvm and data binding. LOTS to learn. Thanks for the blog!
PS Let us (your readers :>) know if you ever get that signed book?! :>
Hi John.. hope you are doing well.. I am doing a talk this weekend about Windows 8 Dev for WP Devs 🙂 aiming to cover some of those topics.
This will be a live post, so as I find no topics, I will add them. While looking at one example, I came across the use of CommandUI. This is something that needs a bit of background, so I added it to the post.