Developing Metro Apps using Visual Studio 2010?

Question

Can anyone guide me, how can i create a metro app using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.?

What are the templates needed to Create Metro Apps.

Updated : If there are some third party libraries available, please let me know.

Answer 1

Metro development is purposed to be done in Windows 8 and Visual Studio 20212 environment. You can use Diskpart (Windows 7 command tool) together with Windows Automated Installation Kit to install a Windows 8 instance in parallel with your current system.

You need
1 ISO; http://www.microsoft.com/sv-se/download/details.aspx?id=5753
2 Automated Inst Kit: http://www.microsoft.com/sv-se/download/details.aspx?id=5753
3 About one-two hours (depends on your count on visual studio setup).

The result will be a file on your disk which is about 50-60GB. The bootloader will, after complete setup, give you both current Windows version and Windows 8 as option.

Perhaps you don't want to spend time on setup, so this may not be the answer you want to see. Which I fully understand. Though, there are several experience benefits using a complete Windows 8 environment. I can type a more detail on that, if requested.

Diskpart can be used like this,

create vdisk file=c:\VHD\Win8.vhd maximum=60000 type=expandable

select vdisk file=c:\VHD\Win8.vhd
attach vdisk
create partition primary
assign letter=v

After that, you can see the actual file which hold space for your virtual disk. In the source folder of the unpacked ISO file, you can find install.wim. That file will be used together with the next command based tool Automated Installation Toolkit.

imagex /info i:\sources\intall.wim 
imagex /apply i:\sources\install.wim 1 v:\

Which will instantiate a silent installation from unpacked ISO to the boot disk. Lastly the virtual boot file should be added as an optional bootup

C:\Windows\System32\bcdboot v:\Windows

From reboot and that you select Windows 8, the installation of Windows 8 will continue from the Metro design. Though after you type the product key. The best part of this, is that while in Windows 8, you still have full access to your current Windows drive.

Please note! This is a brief explanation of a process that make a Windows 8 installation without affect the current Windows, except take a lot of disk space.