(2) Get started with your first Universal Windows app

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hi my name is Dante G and welcome back
to the connect learn series on universal
windows platform application development
now if you were with us for the first
video you have Visual Studio installed
on your machine and you've got the
Universal Windows application tools
installed on your box in this video
we're going to go ahead and create our
first new project and want to go over
some of the details on how to set that
up and then I'm going to give you a tour
of both visual studio and blend to give
you an idea of the environment we're
going to be working with I'm going to go
ahead and click on new project here and
right off the bat I can choose which
type of project I want to work with the
blank app is the one you're going to
want to work with if you're working with
universal windows applications now you
can see on the left I have visual C
selected is that's the language I'm most
comfortable with but if you want to work
with other languages you can drop down
the other languages box
say you're a Visual Basic person I can
click on that one select windows and
blank app is available there now as I
said I'm a little more comfortable with
C so I'm going to go ahead and click on
Windows the blank
app name my
application and press
okay at this point Visual Studio is
creating all the files necessary for
creating a universal windows application
it just takes a moment and everything
will get it set
up all right Visual Studio has created
my first app for me it took a moment or
two but now it's open and I've got my
design surface let's take a look at
visual studio and look at the various
pieces so you understand the environment
we're going to be working with now right
in the center you have your design
surface this is the piece that gives you
an idea of what your application is
going to look like down below you've got
your zaml and you know it's easy enough
to go ahead and switch whichever one I
want to work with so I'll give myself a
little bit more
room over on the top right is your
solution Explorer this is where you can
go to see all the files that are
involved in your project now as you
probably have already guessed the
universal windows platform has more than
just the zaml document in order to
create your project so you have your
zaml document which I can expand here
and find the code behind all of the
pieces that you need are already
available Visual Studio will also create
an assets folder for you so this will
have some placeholders for things like
what your lock screen is going to look
like what your splash screen and so on
to begin with all of these files are
just simple rectangles kind of
placeholders so you want to replace
these before you're ready to deploy to
the store and get your application out
there for people to start using but the
files are there and this is where you're
going to want to put them I'm going to
switch over here and move from Visual
Studio over to blend now I could launch
blend normally and I could go ahead and
open my project but it's actually just a
little bit easier to rightclick my xaml
document and choose design and blend as
soon as I do this Visual Studio will
launch blend for me it'll go ahead and
open my document and the whole process
is taken care of seamlessly and and here
we are in blend some of the same windows
are available you'll notice the solution
Explorer is still here but it's over on
the left but this one also has the
objects and timeline up by default where
I can see all of the elements that are
in my
document now the zaml view is still
available here I just need to click the
tab over and everything is
here so right now you may be asking
yourself what's the difference between
the two tools I'll be showing you in the
next video some of the areas where the
design surface is a little bit more
comfortable over in blend but again it's
all up to you which side you think is
more comfortable now we've got visual
studio and blend running and we've got
our first project created in the next
video we're going to start actually
creating our zaml and we're going to
start doing just a little bit of
application development we'll see you
then
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