windows 8.1 tablet application development - Where to start?

Question

Okay, I m new to windows development. My task to build a small app which will run ONLY on windows 8.1 tablet. (NO app store, nothing like that)

After lots of research on Microsoft site, I am lost in the plethora of information and completely confused. eg Microsoft says, surface tablet apps can be developed on windows vista/7. and then they say somewhere else that windows 8.1 apps can only be developed on windows 8.1 (or 8. I forgot) and I would need a developer license.
Questions: 1- is building apps for surface is different than building apps for windows phone? 2- I want to do it in WPF/c#. possible? 3- for an app running on ONLY windows 8.1 Surface tablet, what are hardware and software requirements? (including windows/ VS version etc.)

Learning something new isn't as issue. The issue is if im learning the Right thing which can help me achieve my task.

Please guide

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You will need a developer licence to debug locally on a machine.

You cannot install (sideload) apps onto a device that isn't developer registered, for consumer deployment, everything must come signed and through the store. You can override this is business and enterprise version of windows, but afaik this has to be done/deployed at an administrator level.

If you want to develop for windows 8.1, you need to be running 8.1, as deploying and debugging are done on the local machine, then optionally displayed in an emulator-like virtual session, there's no actual 'emulator' for desktop windows runtime apps.

Previously, yes, surface was winRT, and mobile was silverlight based. Now with the shared app platform the process is shared across the two, both are winRT and you can deploy one application across the two.

Answer 2

First you need to know that there are two types of apps for devices like Surface. The first one is desktop applications which are commonly referred as WPF Applications. The second one is Modern application commonly called Metro Apps.

The desktop applications can run windows 7/8.1/10 where as metro apps can only run on windows 8.1/10. If you want to build desktop apps you can build them on windows 7/8.1/10 using visual studio 2010/12/13/15, but if you want to build metro applications you need to build them on 8.1 using VS 2013 for windows 8.1, and for windows 10 you need to use windows 10 and vs 2015.

Your question is a bit confusing. If you want to build applications only for windows 8.1 tablet you need to build a metro app and only way to distribute the app is through the App store.

There are two main versions of Windows 8.1. RTM and rest of the versions(like home, pro etc.). Tablets running windows 8.1 RTM can not run all kinds of desktop apps. They only run metro apps. Hybrid tablets running windows home, pro or enterprise can run both desktop and metro apps.

If I am not mistaken surface pro 3 run windows 8.1 pro and can run both wpf and metro apps.

1. It depends. If you want to build WPF apps it is different from windows phone apps. If you want to build metro apps, it's not that different from WP Apps.

2. As I mentioned, surface pro 3 can run desktop apps. So WPF/C# apps are possible.

3. OS: windows 8.1 and visual studio 2013.

For further clarification, Check out the difference between different version of windows, and also differences between desktop and modern(metro) apps.

Starting points for WPF:

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/140611/WPF-Tutorial-Beginning

http://www.wpf-tutorial.com/

Answer 3

See Microsoft Developer Network MSDN

Microsoft Channel9 Tutorial Videos