Building apps for windows tablet.

Question

I am new to wpf. Hence, kindly co-operate with my questions.

I want to build an app that runs on windows tablets. This is not to windows store app, rather, I will be developing this app for some company to visualize the data they have. And they will use this app on tablets or other touch enabled devices.

Background:

App will have some graphs and other visualizing diagrams. And WPF MVVM pattern will be used to develop the app.

My question:

My current system is:

System: HP elite book revolve 810 g2 tablet .NET Framework: 4.0 Visual studio 2012

1. Can I develop a tablet app with the above specification?
2. where can i find coding documents on coding for touch devices in WPF mvvm pattern?
3. How can I use graph or any other visualization method in wpf. I mean, do I have any library that provides API's for different graphs?

Please help me in answering above.

Thank you

Answer 1

This questions will lead to long answers.. I´ll try to make it short!

1. The elite book revolve has an I5 and Windows 8 / 8.1. You should not have problems developing Widnows apps with that.

   Visual Studio 2012 is fine as well, you might want to download the windows phone toolkit (if you want multiplatform apps).

   You will need to use framwork 4.5 to develop Windows 8.1 RT apps though - and this is what you want to do if you want multi device apps. If not then it`s just normal Windows applications that can olny be runn on Windows devices (not Windows phone, or RT tablets)

2. It seems you are a starter in developing Touch apps.

   2.1 Honestly you should consider buying a book before developing. The "Windows 8.1 Apps with XAML and C# Unleashed" one is really good one - you can even read a good share of the first chapter with example code (see links below)!

   2.2 I added a few links to ressources that could help you. Consider looking at MVVM, WPF and Touch coding independently. There are tons of tutorials available!

   2.3. Doing touch support is pretty straightforward, it`s just another event handler (touchdown instead of mouseleftbutton down) so all you need is to know how to best handle events in MVVM (link attached below). Another thing is gesture support (see link)

3. Here is the standard library of xaml controls.. pretty basic but you can do a lot with them: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/xaml/hh465351.aspx if you need better /more graphical controls you might consider using Developer Express or similar APIs heres a list of the graphic tools they provide. Pretty neat: https://www.devexpress.com/products/net/controls/winrt/ Theres also a WinRT XAML Toolkit available: https://winrtxamltoolkit.codeplex.com/ (Tutorial and Graph Preview see below)

Additional Links:

Windows 8.1 Apps with XAML and C# Unleashed (example with code): http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/9780672337086/samplepages/0672337088.pdf

MVVM General developing: https://joshsmithonwpf.wordpress.com/a-guided-tour-of-wpf/

MVVM in Windows 8: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj651572.aspx?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mvvm-using-the-mvvm-pattern-in-windows-8

WinRT XAML Toolkit Tutorial (Windows Store example): http://eren.ws/2013/10/15/using-graphs-and-charts-in-windows-store-apps-boredom-challenge-day-11/

Best way of event Handling in MVVM (needed for Touch event handling): What's the best way to pass event to ViewModel?