Developer Reading List
, December 21, 2012 New books on C, C#, Node, Win8 Apps, Perl and Groovy.
Windows 8 Apps with HTML5 and JavaScript Unleashed
by Stephen Walter
As you surely know from the substantial coverage of Windows 8, if you can write JavaScript and have some practice with HTML5's new features, you can write a Win8 app. This short, handy guide is an excellent tutorial on how to do so. It assumes you know JavaScript and HTML5 and starts from there. It begins by creating and packaging the app, then shows you how to manage various elements of the app's construction using templates, built-in resources (including the most common controls), and techniques for handling local storage access. An additional section discusses the Live SDK, which is how you connect to back-end services for tasks such as authentication or simply moving files to and from Microsoft SkyDrive.
Unlike any of the other books discussed here, this volume has color throughout: The code uses color syntax, and numerous full-color illustrations show how the controls work and exactly what the included code snippets do.
Due to the book's straightforward explanations and easy-to-follow step-by-step directions, this is probably the simplest way to learn to write Windows 8 apps. Highly recommended.