Do simple Windows Forms/WPF apps work on Windows 8 for tablets?

Question

I'm developing a C# .NET business application that needs to work on Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8 Tablet.

1. Do "simple" Windows Forms applications work on both Windows 8 desktop and tablet?
2. Is there a Windows 8 Tablet emulator?
3. Are there any alternatives?

Answer 1

1. Yes, regular ol' windows forms will work on Windows 8. They'll work on whatever operating system supports your target .NET Framework version. They may not run on the Windows RT tablet, but tablets running full Windows 8 will be fine.
2. There's no tablet emulator, but you can get Windows 8 running on an HP Slate 500, or (what I'm doing) run Windows 8 with touch control via Parallels on an iPad.
3. You can develop your app in Silverlight/WPF and have it work well in Windows 7 and 8, but also Windows RT (for ARM tablets). Or HTML5 apps are an option as well.

Answer 2

Windows 8 will still have win32, so all your applications which are win32 based example winform, C++, COM application will still run fine without recompiling. However Win32 will not be present on surface tablets, so they would not run there. You will have to recode your application using metro style which will intern use WinRT (windows runtime).

For details refer to my blog on windows 8