Mastering Windows 8 C++ App Development

Table of Contents

• Preface

• Chapter 1: Introduction to Windows 8 Apps
• Introducing Windows 8
• Touch everywhere
• The Start (Home) screen
• The AppBar
• The Charms bar
• Desktop apps versus Store apps
• The Windows Runtime
• Language projections
• Building the user interface
• Creating your first Store application
• Closing an application
• Application deployment
• Where did int.ToString come from?
• Project structure
• Summary

• Chapter 2: COM and C++ for Windows 8 Store Apps
• Welcome to C++11
• New features in C++11
• nullptr
• auto
• Lambdas
• Smart pointers
• Conclusion
• COM and WinRT
• The IUnknown interface
• IInspectable interface
• Creating a WinRT object
• WinRT metadata
• The Windows Runtime Library
• C++/CX
• Creating and managing objects
• Accessing members
• Methods and properties
• Delegates
• Events
• Defining types and members
• A WinRT component project
• Adding properties and methods
• Adding an event
• Consuming a WinRT component
• Building a C++ client
• Building a C# client
• The Application Binary Interface
• Asynchronous operations
• Using tasks for asynchronous operations
• Cancelling asynchronous operations
• Error handling
• Using existing libraries
• STL
• MFC
• ATL
• Win32 API
• CRT
• DirectX
• C++ AMP
• The Windows Runtime class library
• Strings
• Collections
• Exceptions
• Summary

• Chapter 3: Building UI with XAML
• XAML
• XAML basics
• Type converters
• Complex properties
• Dependency properties and attached properties
• Content properties
• Collection properties
• Markup extensions
• Naming elements
• Connecting events to handlers
• XAML rules summary
• Introducing the Blend for Visual Studio 2012 tool
• XAML compilation and execution
• Connecting XAML, H, and CPP files to the build process
• Resources
• Binary resources
• Logical resources
• Managing logical resources
• Duplicate keys
• Styles
• Implicit (automatic) styles
• Style inheritance
• Store application styles
• Summary

• Chapter 4: Layout, Elements, and Controls
• Introducing layout
• Layout panels
• StackPanel
• Grid
• Canvas
• Adding children to a panel dynamically
• VariableSizedWrapGrid
• Panel virtualization
• Virtualizing panels
• Working with elements and controls
• Content controls
• Buttons
• ScrollViewer
• Other content controls to note
• Collection-based controls
• ListBox and ComboBox
• ListView and GridView
• FlipView
• Text-based elements
• Using custom fonts
• TextBlock
• TextBox
• PasswordBox
• RichTextBlock and RichEditBox
• Images
• The SemanticZoom control
• Summary

• Chapter 5: Data Binding
• Understanding data binding
• Data binding concepts
• Element-to-element binding
• Object-to-element binding
• Binding failures
• Change notifications
• Binding to collections
• Customizing a data view
• Value converters
• Other parameters for Convert and ConvertBack
• Data template selectors
• Commands
• Introduction to MVVM
• MVVM constituents
• Building an MVVM framework
• More on MVVM
• Summary

• Chapter 6: Components, Templates, and Custom Elements
• Windows Runtime Components
• Converting C++ to WinRT
• Crossing the ABI
• Consuming Windows Runtime Components
• Other C++ library projects
• Custom control templates
• Building a control template
• Using the control's properties
• Handling state changes
• Customizing using attached properties
• Custom elements
• User controls
• Creating a color picker user control
• Dependency properties
• Defining dependency properties
• Building the UI
• Adding events
• Using the ColorPicker
• Custom controls
• Creating a ColorPicker custom control
• Binding in code
• Custom panels
• Custom drawn elements
• Summary

• Chapter 7: Applications, Tiles, Tasks, and Notifications
• Application lifecycle
• Saving and restoring the state
• Determining application execution states
• State store options
• Helper classes
• Live tiles
• Setting application tile defaults
• Updating the tile's contents
• Enabling cycle updates
• Tile expiration
• Badge updates
• Creating secondary tiles
• Activating a secondary tile
• Using toast notifications
• Toast options
• Push notifications
• Push notification architecture
• Building a push notification application
• The application server
• Registering for push notifications
• Issuing the push notification
• Push notifications for secondary tiles
• Background tasks
• What is a task?
• Creating and registering a task
• Implementing a task
• Task debugging
• Task progress and cancellation
• Playing background audio
• Playing audio
• Maintaining background audio
• Sound-level notifications
• Lock screen apps
• Requesting to set a lock screen app
• Other common operations for lock screen apps
• Background tasks limits
• Background transfers
• Example – downloading a file
• Summary

• Chapter 8: Contracts and Extensions
• Capabilities
• Contracts
• Share contract
• Share source
• Share target
• Sharing files
• Sharing page UI generation
• FileOpenPicker contract
• Implementing a FileOpenPicker contract
• Debugging contracts
• Extensions
• Settings extension
• Other contracts and extensions
• Summary

• Chapter 9: Packaging and the Windows Store
• The application manifest
• The application view state
• Implementing view state changes
• Packaging and validating
• Using the Windows App Certification Kit
• Summary

• Index