DEVCON – Kolkata, A New Beginning on 12th November, 2011

November 12th , we are getting together for a big event Developer Conference 2011 Organized by Microsoft User Group Kolkata (KolkataGeeks) .  Developer Conference is the premier technical event for technology professionals at Kolkata interested in learning, connecting and exploring latest Microsoft technologies.  This is also going to be community Launch event for Office 365. So be there and enjoy the flavor of cutting edge Microsoft technologies.

This is a full day event and you can attend this  event in person at Bharatiya Bhasha Parisad 36A, Shakespeare Sarani, 4th Floor  Kolkata – 700017.  Overall there are 7 different sessions which primarily focused on latest Microsoft Technologies.  .  Check the Dev Con Web Site for more information.

I’ll be presenting on “Windows 8 Metro Style Application“.  In this session I will talk about latest Windows release and how you can get best out of it through your Metro Style applications. There will be lots of demo in this session. 

Check out session details and agenda from here http://kolkatageeks.com/DevCon2011.aspx .  You can register for this event over here  http://kolkatageeks.com/DevCon2011/Register.aspx

See you there !

Layout adjustments Snapping and OrientationChanges in Metro Applications

If you have read my first article on Windows 8 metro styled application, you might already know about the working principle of it. I have talked about the capabilities for an application and settings which end user can configure for an application. In this post I will take a look at the basic layout structure that one needs to follow while creating an application in WinRT Metro styles so that it is best suited to perform well.

Layout is the most important part of any application. The best design for an application gets more credit and love from the users than applications that are designed bad. Metro style applications runs in full screen. Your application does not include a  Title Bar, status bar or anything. Microsoft gave us some of the basic layout guidelines that one needs to follow. Lets talk about them here to make you understand how you should layout your application in Metro Applications to utilize maximum flexibility of it.

Understanding basic WinRT Metro Applications and Application Capabilities

Just about a month ago, WinRT was introduced with all new style of application development that can work better with Multi Touch Enabled devices. We call it as Metro Applications. In this post, I will discuss how to develop your first metro applications and how to work with its layout changes.

How to Start

Before we start talking directly about Metro Style application, let us see how to install it first. I refer to use OracleVM which you can find for free from this link, and install.  This will install a Virtual Machine in which you can install the Developer Preview of Windows 8.