LTH08 Building Shared Mobile Apps for Windows Store and Windows Phone

03/13/2014

9:30am - 10:45am

Level: Advanced

Nick Landry

Senior Technical Evangelist

Microsoft

Attend this session and extend the reach of your apps

Windows and Windows Phone share a common core. WinRT is the common denominator. If you think you can write an app for one and expect to run it as is on the other, think again. There are obvious screen real estate considerations between a Nokia Lumia and a Microsoft Surface. The input methods will also vary, as are the expectations of the user when working on each device. The differences are also more than skin deep. Come learn how to maximize your design & code reuse between the two platforms to reduce your development time and your migration costs. We'll discuss strategies on how to tackle a project that targets the phone and the tablet, which platform to use as the baseline, how to structure your solution and your code, what portions can be shared and how, and how to deal with the incompatibilities and differences.

This session will present an actual example of an app that runs on both Windows Phone and a Microsoft Surface while sharing as much code as possible. If you build a successful app on one of the mobile Windows platforms, your users will want your app on the other. Attend this session and extend the reach of your apps.

You will learn:

  • The basics of the Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 application models, the differences between the two platforms and what the common ground is
  • How to write portable class libraries that can be used across several platforms
  • How to design & build mobile application projects intended to target both Windows Phone and Windows 8, each with their own distinctive user interface