Visual Studio 2012/2013 and Windows 8.1 apps clarifications

Pumped after BUILD, you downloaded and installed Windows 8.1 Preview and VS 2013 Preview and now you want to start building new Store apps ?
You should read the following:

 

  • Visual Studio 2012 (running on either Windows 8 or Windows 8.1) continues to support creating and working with Windows Store apps for Windows 8.  It does not support creating or working with Windows Store apps for Windows 8.1.  Apps targeting Windows 8 continue to work on Windows 8.1, they just can’t take advantage of all of the new Windows 8.1 functionality and performance improvements.
  • Visual Studio 2013 Preview, when running on Windows 8.1, supports creating and working with Windows Store apps for Windows 8.1; it also supports working with existing Windows Store apps for Windows 8, but it doesn’t contain templates for creating new Windows Store apps for Windows 8.
  • Visual Studio 2013 Preview, when running on Windows 8, does not support working with Windows Store apps, regardless of whether they’re targeting Windows 8 or Windows 8.1.
  • Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2013 Preview can be installed and run side-by-side on the same machine.

Conclusion: install both VS2012 and VS2013 Preview on Windows 8.1 and you should be good to go…

1 Comment

  • The feedback on Soma's blog says it all. Microsoft is really telling the devs it no longer cares what they think. Having to pay for a new version of Visual Studio to be able to target an incremental release of the OS is a perfect example. The UI of Visual Studio is still horrible. I wonder how many developers are putting off upgrading from 2010 until things get straightened out. I know my team is staying put. 2010 may be the last version of the IDE we use as the team is starting to consider open source alternatives because ASP.NET is in limbo.

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