HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
Using Visual Studio
2012 express edition for
Windows 8
Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical.
— J. K. Rowling,
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Microsoft Windows 8 marks the debut of a significantly revised runtime platform—the Windows
RunTime (WinRT) platform. Like the .NET platform, WinRT supports several programming
languages. You will find a pleasant surprise (and an old acquaintance) side by side with the popular
.NET languages (such as, C#, Visual Basic, C++, F#)—the JavaScript language.
Note
You may not even recall that a decade ago, when Microsoft first shipped the .NET
Framework, developers were also given a chance to write applications using an adapted
version of JavaScript called JScript .NET. It was not exactly a success; indeed, today you
won't even find JScript .NET supported in Visual Studio—the premiere development
environment for .NET code. Ten years ago, JavaScript was probably close to the bottom of
its popularity. JScript .NET was a dialect of the standard JavaScript, and using JScript .NET
didn't mean you could use HTML and CSS to shape up the user interface of the resulting
application. This is different in Windows 8.
Building Windows 8 applications with JavaScript means that you define the layout of the user
interface with HTML and add style and graphics using CSS. As for the application's logic, you use
the standard JavaScript language enriched by any JavaScript libraries you wish (such as the common
jQuery library), while you access WinRT system classes using an ad hoc Microsoft-created JavaScript
wrapper—the WinJs library.
