New Course: Build Apps for Both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8

Microsoft Virtual Academy is offering a new Jump Start course for developers who wish to build apps for both Windows 8/RT and Windows Phone 8. According to the firm, this course targets developers with some experience developing for Windows Phone and features guidance, best practices, patterns and techniques that will then deliver apps for both platforms.

The full course is presented by Ben Riga and is now available online from both Microsoft Virtual Academy and Channel 9, and includes the following modules:

Comparing Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, Part 1
Comparing Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, Part 2

Windows 8 and Windows are not the same platform. This module will cover how they are different by going over the UI and XAML, Platform specific features and reviewing the data model and supporting code.

Basics of View Models

This session will go over Data binding basics and look further into Dependency object and  property. It will review properties for binding specifically INotifyPropertyChanged and INotifyCollectionChanged, and include business logic to respond to user actions in the view.

Model-View-ViewModel

This module introduces the user to MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel), the architecture and the Pros and cons. It will provide and overview for how to share code using MVVM, .NET portable class library as well as going over best practices and providing a wealth of resource information.

Sharing Code Between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8

Ben creates live demos to show examples of how to maximize code reuse. This final segment will include an overview of reuse techniques such as portable library, shared source code, inheritance, conditional compilation, partial classes and methods.