Comment Feed for Channel 9 - From Windows Phone 7 to Windows 8 Metro, one app's journey http://files.channel9.msdn.com/thumbnail/74527b5c-e04c-48a3-acc9-5e84a1dbb7c7.png Channel 9 - From Windows Phone 7 to Windows 8 Metro, one app's journey Last week we highlighted Den Delimarsky's Visual Studio Achievements for Windows Phone 7 app. On this Metro Monday, seems fitting to pair that post up with this one. With Windows 8 and Metro a common question is, "How hard is it to re-use, re-purpose or port a Windows Phone 7 app to a Windows 8 Metro Style app?" Den's stepped up and answered that very question... Porting Visual Studio Achievements for Windows Phone to Windows 8 Article SeriesVisual Studio Achievements for Windows Phone is an open-source application that aggregates Channel9 Visual Studio Achievements to a Windows Phone device (couldn’t have made it more obvious). I ported this application to Windows 8 as a general learning experience and made the notes available for the public. You can familiarize yourself with the process I followed by reading the articles below: Porting Visual Studio Achievements for WP to Windows 8 - Layout and basic bindings Porting Visual Studio Achievements for WP to Windows 8 - Minor problems and data acquisition Porting Visual Studio Achievements for WP to Windows 8 - Getting primary user input Porting Visual Studio Achievements for WP to Windows 8 - Serialization and Storage Porting Visual Studio Achievements for WP to Windows 8 - Viewing and Sharing Porting a Windows Phone application to Windows 8 - A Look from 10,000 Feet Above If you would like to share some feedback and similar experiences, feel free to do so. The series starts at the very beginning,starting with a Windows Phone 7 app and then through completing it and documenting lessons learned. Porting Visual Studio Achievements for WP to Windows 8 - Layout and basic bindingsOne of the great features that is currently highlighted for Windows 8 and specifically WinRT is the low barrier of entry for existing Windows Phone and Silverlight developers in general. There was already a case of an existing Windows Phone application being ported to the new OS, but I decided to actually document the entire porting process in its core. Let's start with the very basics and assume that I have no code whatsoever on my local machine. I am heading over to the CodePlex page and download the source ZIP. OI course, you might want to choose a version control system and pull the source that way, but I will leave that at your own discretion. The default solution is of course opened in Visual Studio 2010. Your solution contents should resemble this: Now let's working on the actual new project. Launch Visual Studio 11 Beta and click on New Project. Select Visual C# > Windows Metro Style and finally - Blank Application. Give a unique name to the project. I personally used VSAW8. Open BlankPage.xaml - this is the main work page that will display all necessary user information. For convenience purposes, I renamed it to MainPage.xaml. ... Porting a Windows Phone Application to Windows 8 - A Look from 10,000 Feet AboveI managed to successfully port my Visual Studio Achievements for Windows Phone to Windows 8 - it now fully works in the Metro environment with absolutely the same capabilities as its mobile counterpart (the Windows 8 version is mobile to some extent too, since Windows 8 will be used on tablets). This article represents a general overview of the process. TimeAs long as the application is well-designed, it should not take much time to port it to Metro. So if you have a good separation of concerns and files are structured well in a solution, you can just copy and paste the necessary components, adjust the namespaces, update references and you are ready to go in a lot of cases. There are exceptions, that I will be talking about later in this article, but generally the most time-consuming part of the process is the threading model reorganization. Recommended reading: App Porting to Windows 8 Already Possible ReferencesThere is not much trouble with modifying references either. As I was moving code files from the Windows Phone project to the Metro one, I had to do slight modifications in the JSON parser that is now accessed through Windows.Data.Json, which is much nicer than its Silverlight counterpart, by the way, and I was not sure how I should reference it. ... Bottom LineThe overall porting experience is straightforward and easy to the point where parts of it could be automated. Should a developer create applications that are released both for Windows 8 and Windows Phone? Yes. Can most of the code base be reused? Yes. Do both applications have to provide the same experience? The consistency of the UI is a given as long as you are following the general conventions, but you might also consider building a Windows Phone application that is a companion for its Windows 8 counterpart instead of a duplicate. If you have a Windows Phone 7 app today and are wondering what it would take turn it into a Windows 8 Metro Style app, or are just interested in seeing a Windows 8 Metro Style app being built, this series is a must read... en Tue, 21 May 2013 10:58:21 GMT Tue, 21 May 2013 10:58:21 GMT Rev9 Re: From Windows Phone 7 to Windows 8 Metro, one app's journey Hi there,

This is a great source for .NET next generation developers. I was about to follow the port journey but I got a couple of compilation errors when I downloaded the original Windows Phone app. Visual Studio can't resolve the project references to System.Json and System.Windows.Controls.Input. Any ideas? Do I need to install .NET 4.5?

 

Thanks

posted by AntonioBaker

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/From-Windows-Phone-7-to-Windows-8-Metro-one-apps-journey#c634726006462906622 Mon, 14 May 2012 13:57:26 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/From-Windows-Phone-7-to-Windows-8-Metro-one-apps-journey#c634726006462906622 AntonioBaker Re: From Windows Phone 7 to Windows 8 Metro, one app's journey @AntonioBaker:Those are in the Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit. Check out last Monday's post for a few more details, http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Visual-Studio-Achievements-for-Windows-Phone

System.Json is part of the Silverlight SDK. Here's the path where that reference resolves for me, C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Libraries\Client\System.Json.dll

posted by gduncan411

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/From-Windows-Phone-7-to-Windows-8-Metro-one-apps-journey#c634726055444980023 Mon, 14 May 2012 15:19:04 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/From-Windows-Phone-7-to-Windows-8-Metro-one-apps-journey#c634726055444980023 gduncan411