Check out Brian Hitney's blog here: http://www.structuretoobig.com
Also, check out our Windows 8 Zone.
I’ve given a lot of
thought over the past few weeks to application migration scenarios. I did
a lot of this with the cloud when Windows Azure first launched in 2009, doing a
number of blog posts and presentations about moving ASP/.NET code to the cloud.
Now, I’ve been thinking more about moving applications to Windows 8, and given
the choices and frameworks available today, I’m often asked what I would do in
various situations. Let’s start with an overview of Windows 8, using this
graphic from \\build that you’ve likely seen before:
I originally intended this post to be about MVVM, the Model-View-ViewModel design pattern
that everyone loves, but few actually use. It’s not because people
think they’re doing MVVM but really not (although I hear this one a lot, too),
it’s just that very few greenfield apps are being built and even the ones that
are are either 1) too simple to consider a design pattern, or 2) it’s
sacrificed to get to production in the least amount of time. I still
believe creating testable, solid code around well principled design patterns
(be it MVC, MVVM, or whatever) will yield the most benefit over the long term
if there are anticipated modifications and maintenance needs. But in the
short term or for small projects, it’s typically not a benefit due to longer
development time and performance tradeoffs. (A few popular MVVM
frameworks out there include Prism, MVVM
Light, and Caliburn.Micro.)
While creating a write-once run anywhere app
won’t happen, you can reduce the friction as much as possible. When
moving to Windows 8 from Windows Phone, there are two primary objectives: adapt
the UI, and change WP API calls to WinRT API calls. Here’s a great article on MSDN with more info on
that. (Notice that one tip in the article is refactoring to MVVM.)
For line of business applications,
Silverlight, or WPF migrations, XAML and C# offers the easiest migration and
new development experience, and leveraging the above frameworks or MVVM pattern
can make that transition as painless as possible. If you’re lucky
enough to do greenfield development where broad platform reach is the goal,
there’s only 1 development choice: HTML 5. If you are a
developer and not sold on the fact that HTML 5 is the development platform to
know over the next 3 years (at a minimum), you need to embrace HTML 5.
To that end, for Windows 8 development I’d
start with frameworks like KnockoutJS (an open source, Javascript-based
MVVM engine) and this post written by Dave Isbitski, my
colleague. It’s also a good idea to look into PhoneGap, Sencha Touch 2, and KendoUI.
Link roundup:
Brian Hitney is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Corporation focused on cloud computing. He frequently delivers presentations and works with local community groups and customers on emerging technologies, .NET, and developer tools. Prior to his Developer Evangelist role, Brian worked as a software engineer on a Windows team in Redmond, and before he joined Microsoft he helped build large scale e-commerce applications for various companies across the United States. Brian is based out of Greensboro, NC
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