Development tools and store overview (Android versus Windows Store apps)
[This article is for Windows 8.x and Windows Phone 8.x developers writing Windows Runtime apps. If you’re developing for Windows 10, see the latest documentation]
Learn about key similarities and differences between the development tools and stores for Android and Windows Store apps.
Development tools
The following figure shows that Eclipse, NetBeans, and IntelliJ are a few of the development environments that support Android app development. To develop Windows Store apps for Windows 8.1, you need Windows 8.1 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2013. Visual Studio 2013 has a drag-and-drop UI designer similar to the Android UI designer in Eclipse. Visual Studio 2013 also includes Blend for Microsoft Visual Studio 2013, a designer-centric tool to create rich user experiences through dragging and dropping widgets, animations, and transitions.
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Android app development is done mostly in Java (in a few cases with C or C++), while Windows Store apps support C++, C#, Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, and JavaScript. Declarative screen design in Android is represented in an XML file which gets injected into the corresponding activity code at run time. Similarly, declarative screen design in Windows 8 is represented in Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML). XAML is a declarative language, with each XML node representing a Windows Runtime object. Windows 8 uses the same XAML format with C++, C#, Visual Basic .NET. JavaScript uses HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as its declarative screen design language. Microsoft DirectX programming in C++ doesn't use any declarative screen design language.
Since Windows 8 is required to develop Windows Store apps, developers who use Windows 7, Linux, or Mac must either use virtualization apps (like VirtualBox, VMWare, or Parallels) to run Windows 8 as a virtual machine (VM) or install Windows 8 in a dual-boot mode.
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Store
The following figure shows the set of activities that result in submitting an app to the stores for Android and Windows 8.
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The Windows Store apps Dev Center is the main website for Windows Store app design and development resources. These resources include tools and software development kit (SDK) downloads, documentation on how to create your first app, API documentation, and many code samples from Microsoft and the developer community.
You don't need to register with the Windows Store to develop apps (unless you're developing an app that uses push notifications; then you must register). You must register when you're ready to publish your apps to the Windows Store. The Windows Store registration fee is currently waived for some MSDN subscriber levels.
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