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Can I develop my custom private Metro-style applications and deploy them directly to my customers, bypassing the market?

Will I be able to provide my customers with their custom-made applications in Metro-style?

For instance, in Android you can transfer an APK file.

Kara
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Shimmy Weitzhandler
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3 Answers3

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On Technet there's an article on sideloading Metro style applications. Basically, the requirements are as follows:

  • The application must be cryptograhically signed.
  • The computer it will be installed to must trust the signing certificate.
  • The Allow all trusted applications to install group policy setting must be enabled.
  • To run the application the computer must be joined to a domain.

As long as your customers are in enterprise environment these requirements shouldn't be a problem. Outside enterprise environment you'll need to distibute your apps through the Windows store.

At least with the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 the sideloading also works on machines with a valid developer licence. I couldn't find any official info on that but this might stay the case with the final release as well for the purpose of testing the apps.

EDIT: Some additional info has just been published. Key points:

  • Sideloading will be enabled in Windows 8 Enterprise Edition and Windows 8 Server editions. It is also currently enabled in both Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Windows Server 8 Beta.
  • In other editions of Windows 8 a special product key will need to be activated to enable sideloading. It might not be necessary for the computer to be joined to a domain in this case.
Damir Arh
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  • I get the picture. I stick to Silverlight. – Shimmy Weitzhandler Apr 22 '12 at 06:56
  • http://techpp.com/2012/08/17/install-non-store-apps-windows-8-sideloading/ indicates that it may be possible to work around this restriction by setting a registry key, even on non-Enterprise/Pro Windows editions. – Walter Mundt Aug 25 '12 at 19:26
  • Also note that according to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/windows/apps/hh974578 developer licenses are free and work on any edition of windows to allow sideloading. If your customers are enthusiasts or generally tech-savvy, it may be possible to have them get their own dev licenses. Whether or not Microsoft would be pleased with you or them for doing this is another question. There is a section on "fraudulent use" of dev licenses on the linked page but I haven't yet seen any list of which things would count as "fraudulent" for those purposes. – Walter Mundt Aug 25 '12 at 19:35
  • One more link: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/04/25/deploying-metro-style-apps-to-businesses.aspx says this about the "sideloading key": "Activate a special product key by using a script on the target machine to enable sideloading. We'll go into more detail about how the IT admin will acquire the product keys in an upcoming blog post. The product key only needs to be install and activated once on the PC." I still haven't found out where these keys come from but presumably they are only available to "enterprise-grade" customers based on the presentation in the linked post. – Walter Mundt Aug 25 '12 at 19:49
  • Chrome has somehow figured out a way to sideload a metro version without going through the store. – eoleary Sep 28 '12 at 15:29
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    @EOLeary Chrome does not have a way of sideloading a metro version. Instead it's an API in Win8 provided for Web Browsers allowing them to run full screen looking like Metro Apps and only if they are the default browser, documentation can be found here: http://t.co/j67BoG6N – TimothyP Dec 04 '12 at 04:45
  • @TimothyP Yeah, I discovered that as well. – eoleary Dec 06 '12 at 22:42
6

Sort of … not really.

Windows 8 Enterprise edition will have the ability to side-load Metro-style apps. The idea is that you can deploy an internal app to your enterprise. The implication is that non-enterprise editions that will come with your consumer/retail PC or tablet will likely not support side-loading of Metro-style apps.

See No escape from the store for the plebs!.

Peter Mortensen
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Jay
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I don't see why not. I've played with the Visual Studio 11 beta on Windows 8, and one of the templates is for a Metro app. It was just a .NET executable. So, as long as you can deploy that to your machines just like you do today, there should be no problem.

Andrew
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  • Read [this](http://stackoverflow.com/a/10264478/75500) answer, can you check your version? – Shimmy Weitzhandler Apr 22 '12 at 01:31
  • I could be completely wrong, and I guess I didn't check whether the application would be deployable to consumer editions of Windows 8. We'll be working on an internal tablet application and deployment on Windows 8 once the software and hardware are on the market. If we couldn't deploy internally, that would be unintelligent to say the least. – Andrew Apr 22 '12 at 01:50