I finally decided to dabble in the world of writing apps for the Microsoft(R) Store. My first project was one of personal necessity. A simple timing application for speeches. As well as a geek, I am a member of an organization called Toastmasters. We time speeches during meetings.
I tried several other peoples applications, but had not found one. So, I built my own. It was not that hard and gave me my first exposure to writing an application using the Universal Windows Platform.
Like anything, I already have several enhancements that I would like to make. Geeks are never done until they are done.
The process is quite involved. If you think about it, you are becoming a partner with Microsoft who will sell your software. I chose to charge something for my first application to see what that process is all about. Hopefully a couple bucks won’t deter people from buying it.
I should have documented the steps more closely because I am not sure I will know them all for future. But, suffice to say that it was not that hard.
Visual Studio does most of the heavy lifting of bundling your software for distribution. I had a few issues, but it turned out they were niggly things. Once I Googled the answers, I was able to figure it out and get all the way to building the packages needed for publishing.
My next project will no doubt be more advanced, so it will involve more steps.
The one thing I did not think about is that you need to be a little bit handy with graphics tools. You need to be able to create the basic look you want for the iconography for the application. Again, Visual Studio did a lot of the heavy lifting. I was able to create one graphic that was used to generate all the other sizes. Works well, but if you are fussy about the look, you will probably want to hand craft the various icons yourself.
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