Free Windows 8 Whitepapers Available from Microsoft

As Microsoft stressed repeatedly since BUILD, Windows 8 Build 8102 Milestone 3 (M3) is just a Developer Preview of the operating system. 

As such, it should be no real surprise that developers are the focus of the release, with core user experiences being less of a priority, at least for the time being, although this is bound to change with the advent of Windows 8 Beta. 

Early adopters already testing the Windows Developer Preview, and especially those devs already building Metro apps, can take advantage of a number of Windows 8 whitepapers offered by Microsoft. 

All they have to do is make their way to the “White papers for Windows Developer Preview” webpage on the new Windows Dev Center. 

There are no less than three examples of documentation available right there: 

“Developing connected applications - This paper provides a set of network considerations that every connected Metro style app should know about. 

“Metro style apps using JavaScript versus traditional web apps - This topic provides information about the differences in coding styles used in existing Web apps written in JavaScript, compared to Metro style apps written for the Windows Runtime. It provides guidelines for Web developers to understand how code that is optimized for Windows relates to apps that are meant to be migrated among platforms with ease. It assumes that the reader is familiar with JavaScript programming and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards.

“Input Hosting Manager and the Touch Keyboard - This paper provides information about the invocation and dismissal behaviors of the Touch Keyboard (TKB) for Windows operating systems. It provides guidelines for developers to understand how the TKB shows and hides itself.”

Another four whitepapers can be grabbed right from the Microsoft Download Center, unlike the examples enumerated above. 

The “Play To and media sharing for Metro style apps” whitepaper focuses on the newly introduced Play To and home media sharing APIs for, providing developers with examples on how to leverage the new resources at their disposal. 

With “Introduction to Background Tasks,” Microsoft manages to detail the background tasks for Metro style apps. Similarly, the label of the “Overview of motion and device orientation for Windows Developer Preview” whitepaper should also be self-explanatory. 

And last but not least, “Using the Windows App Certification Kit” is a resource set up to offer insight into ACK and the key role it plays in app certification programs for Windows 8.

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