Although Microsoft released a developer preview for Windows 8 last September, few developers have started creating apps for its new Metro interface. Many of those few who have created apps participated in Microsoft’s First Apps contest. Their early reviews of the platform are mixed, with plenty of call for more documentation.
“There has not been enough time for the community to blaze many trails. Open source projects and blog posts for the platform are just starting to appear, but for the immediate future developers need to rely on those created for derivative technologies like Silverlight and .NET or HTML and JavaScript,” said Tim Greenfield, a software developer at Vertigo Software. “If there?s a silver lining, it is that the Windows team is doing an amazing job fielding questions on the Metro developer forums. Engineers from Microsoft are out there in force helping developers and frankly, it?s the next best thing to being able to send a personal email to the engineers themselves.”
Patrick Goodwin, a student at the University of Michigan who built an app for the contest added, “I enjoyed being able to dabble with the tooling and other new features on Win8, but over all I felt the lack of solid documentation really slowed me down. The tools, as far as I can see, are very robust and great. They just need to improve documentation during the beta. The giant Metro Style App sample pack was able to provide a lot of help, but you ended up having to dig through it to find the bits you need.”
