Building Windows 8 Apps Is the Same for ARM and x86

One of the main focuses Microsoft has announced for the next flavor of its desktop client, Windows 8, is the availability of a consistent experience across all devices. That also includes the development of applications for Windows on ARM, which is now to be the same as when it comes to building apps for x86 architectures.

For application developers, this means that their Metro-style software will work on Windows 8 regardless of whether it runs on ARM or other architecture.

WOA (Windows on ARM) arrives with all the WinRT capabilities present in the Windows Developer Preview. This means that developers can take advantage of all the tools and techniques used for building Metro style apps for x86/64, to come up with apps for ARM as well.

Devs will be able to use available tools to create native C/C++ code for increased performance, and can also benefit from C#, XAML, VB, and HTML5 based tools for delivering applications for WOA. All that is required is that their code targets the WinRT API set.

“Additionally, developers with existing code, whether in C, C++, C#, Visual Basic, or JavaScript, are free to incorporate that code into their apps, so long as it targets the WinRT API set for Windows services,” Steven Sinofsky explains in a blog post.

• Read more
• Softpedia
  

Tags: 64bit | analysis | apps | development | intel | x86