Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Unleashed, Third Edition

Moving from Silverlight to WinRT

Moving onto the new WinRT platform is not a zero-cost exercise for existing applications. The UI controls that you interact with are just one example of the API change between Windows Phone Silverlight and Windows Phone WinRT applications. Silverlight controls live within the Microsoft.Phone.Controls namespace, whereas WinRT components live under Windows.UI.Xaml. The UI elements are similar, but not the same.

There is another fact that is important to understand: WinRT for Windows and WinRT for Windows Phone are very similar APIs, but they are not identical. Although there is considerable overlap, there are items that exist in the phone library that don’t exist in the windows library, and vice versa. You can ...