Channel 9 Forums - Coffeehouse - Windows 8 Dev Conference

Coffeehouse - Windows 8 Dev Conference

Hotshot — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 21:24:14 GMT

I am sitting in the afternoon session at the developer conference in Salt Lake City and wanted to take moment and give some feedback about an earlier session.

I have a Windows 8 app in the store called PhoneTrek. It is a recreation of the classic trek game that has been around since 1970.

In the earlier session the snap feature of Windows 8 was mentioned. I opened PhoneTrek and took a look at how it behaves when snapped. It was not great. I would not have really thought about that without having been here. At least not until later when I got more familiar with Windows 8 or if I got bad feedback from a user.

Because of that one thing I am going to fix PhoneTrek and release an update.

Thank You!

Coffeehouse - Windows 8 Dev Conference

Harlequin — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 23:38:35 GMT

Note that your Windows 8 app when snapped doesn't have to be "functional", it just has to be implemented so there is something there. If it's a horrible experience when snapped, then do what the Windows Store app does, just show a logo.

Coffeehouse - Windows 8 Dev Conference

Craig Matthews — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 02:51:43 GMT

I interpreted requirement 3.6 differently.

Your app must remain functional when the customer snaps and unsnaps the app.

Apparently the Windows Store app violates it.

I guess it depends on what the store approval process considers "functional."

Coffeehouse - Windows 8 Dev Conference

Bas — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 11:43:01 GMT

@Craig_Matthews: I agree. At Build 11, they even hammered on the fact that snapped view shouldn't be like a "limited version" of the app, but a fully functional alternative view. Reducing it to just a logo seems like the very worst thing they could've done. I see no reason why the gridviews the Store app consists of couldn't be reduced to vertical listviews either.

Of course, I guess there are situations where you can't really work well in a small snapped column, like when you have some sort of data that really needs a larger display, but even then I'd prefer it if there was a "Show more..." button that unsnapped the app rather than just the logo.

1 day ago, Hotshot wrote
In the earlier session the snap feature of Windows 8 was mentioned. I opened PhoneTrek and took a look at how it behaves when snapped. It was not great. I would not have really thought about that without having been here. At least not until later when I got more familiar with Windows 8 or if I got bad feedback from a user.

There's a bunch of gotchas to look out for when you're used to more traditional application models. For instance, don't forget to check how your apps look when the device it runs on is oriented horizontally, what happens if your app gets launched via something other than its tile (via the search charm for instance), and if your app can restore from suspension as if it had been running the whole time. I've found the various "Guidelines for..." Windows Store App articles on MSDN very convenient for that sort of thing.