Visual Basic 2012 Programmer's Reference

BUILDING METRO-STYLE APPLICATIONS

The Windows 8 operating system is quite different from other Windows operating systems such as Vista and Windows 7. Windows 8’s Metro interface doesn’t provide Windows Explorer to let you browse through the system’s directory structure, doesn’t display a desktop where you can arrange folders and icons, and doesn’t let you have many programs all running and visible at the same time. Because the Metro interface is so different from those of previous operating systems, Metro-style programs must be written in a new way to work properly.

This chapter explains the basic process of building a Metro-style application. It explains how to create a Metro-style application and give it the images it needs to display properly in the Windows 8 Metro interface.

To help you get started, this chapter walks through the most important parts of the MetroBones application shown in Figure 21-1. This program is a “hangman” game where you try to guess the letters in a randomly chosen word. When you click a letter button on the bottom, the program displays it in the top spaces if the letter is part of the current word. If the letter is not part of the current word, the program displays a new piece of the skeleton on the left. If you guess all of the word’s letters before you build the complete skeleton, you win.

FIGURE 21-1: This chapter explains how to build the MetroBones “hangman” game.

NOTE

The artwork for MetroBones was kindly provided by Jeff Scarterfield, ...