The new Metro development tools from Microsoft are a pleasant surprise. The focus on apps demonstrated by Windows 8 touchscreen notebooks (and handheld devices) will certainly appeal to anyone who likes to tinker with apps, or simply wants to exploit another market. There are two concise books from Apress that introduce and demonstrate developing with Metro. This one deals with building Windows apps with Hypertext Markup Language 5 (HTML5) and JavaScript, while the other [1] describes building apps with Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) and C#.

The book is full of code examples structured by function, including data and bindings, application controls, layouts and tiles, and life cycle events. These are some of the basics for app development regardless of flavor and all are presented very simply. The sample grocery list project is rather dull, but applying the examples to your own sample project will better facilitate engagement with the material and help you retain the information presented.

To get started building with Metro, you will need a machine running Windows 8. The development environment is the new Visual Studio 11 Express, a free download from Microsoft.

If you are familiar with Web development, you will easily understand the default files produced by Visual Studio 11. If you already use Visual Studio, then you will quickly pick up Metro. The sample chapters present a problem/solution approach with pointers to the reference pages. Code listings contain the scripts relevant to each topic.

I found the code samples very basic, and easy to implement using JavaScript and HTML5. If you seek a reference for more complex programming, then the companion title demonstrating XAML and C# might be the better choice.