Welcome to the Windows 8 Metro Application Development Series, In this series we are going to start form the scratch and see how to develop applications on Windows 8 Platform which is basically Metro Styled Applications. This is the first of the series of articles on the Metro Application development on Windows 8 where we are going to see the basic idea on Windows 8 and also we are going to see what are the software and hardware requirements that are required to develop the Metro Application.
Windows 8 is an official version of the next generation Windows Operating System announced by Microsoft which is the successor of Windows 7. Windows 8 Operating System is for use on Personal Desktop, Laptops, Tablets PC’s . Compared to the existing version (Windows 7) in Windows 8 Consumer Preview we can see it is featured with Metro Style Application which is targeted for Multi Touch screen design inputs which is similar to a Windows Phone platform.
Windows 8 is fast and speedy that when we use the application or play games, as Windows 8 starts quickly and uses less memory for the application and games. Also Windows 8 is cloud connected, so we can have direct access to the data over the cloud to the Windows 8 PC or the tablet on the go. Like Windows Phone Marketplace here in Windows 8 as well we have a market place where have option to download the latest applications and games and share along with your friends over the social networking media.
Let us see some of the recommendations which Microsoft suggests for using the Windows 8 Operating System as below.
Microsoft recommends:
- 1 GHz or faster processor
- 1 GB RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
- 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
- DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver.
- 1024×768 screen resolution for the Metro Styled Application development.
Microsoft for Metro Style applications, recommends to have a minimum of 1024X768 Screen resolution and 1366X768 for the Snap Feature, if any Metro Style application is opened without the above resolution we will get an error message.
Some of the Hardware features stated by Microsoft are:
- Secured Boot requires a new UEFI BIOS, which is not available broadly on PCs yet, but is starting to be made available. If your machine does have UEFI, you can enable it via BIOS settings.
- BitLocker does not require but performs more seamlessly if your PC has a Trusted Platform Module (TPM). Machines that have this sometimes require it to be enabled via BIOS settings. BitLocker To Go requires a USB flash drive that meets performance criteria evaluated at installation time.
- Hyper-V requires a 64-bit system with second level address translation (SLAT) capabilities and an additional 2 GB of RAM. You can also enable SLAT via a BIOS setting.
- Some games and other software require graphics capabilities compatible with DirectX 10 or higher (including some games available in the Consumer Preview and in the Windows Store. We will continue to improve the verification of your system prior to downloading or running software with these requirements). Some games and programs might require a graphics card for optimal performance.
- If you clean install instead of upgrade (see below), you should check your PC manufacturer’s website to make sure you install any specific drivers that they provide there. Many laptops will get better battery life with a power-optimized driver that is specific for that PC (often known as ACPI, Power, or Chipset driver).
Metro Styles Windows 8 Screen:
Windows 8 Desktop:
Windows 8 Consumer Preview, can be downloaded from the Microsoft website and can be used in a virtual machine or can be used as a Primary Bootable Operating System based on the requirement. We are going to see in this series a complete package on installing the Windows 8 on to a development machine and start developing the applications and uploading to the market place. This series will be lasting till we complete most of the newly introduced items in Windows 8 development environment.
