Programming Windows: Hello, WinRT (Premium)

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out a way to run the Windows 8 Developer Preview in a virtual machine so that I could write code using its bundled version of Visual Studio 11 Express and the then-current version of the Windows Runtime (WinRT) APIs. But I needn’t have bothered: as it turns out, a basic Windows 10 Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app created using the most recent version of Visual Studio at the time of this writing---2022---is nearly identical from a software code perspective.

To prove this, I examined the code that Charles Petzold provided for his first, hello world-style Windows 8 app in the book Programming Windows Sixth Edition. And then I compared that code to the code that Visual Studio 2022 generates when you create a new, blank UWP app.

Here’s the Petzold code for MainPage.xaml:
<Page
    x:Class="Hello.MainPage"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:local="using:Hello"
    xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
    xmlns:mc=http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006
    mc:Ignorable="d">

    <Grid Background="{StaticResource ApplicationPageBackgroundThemeBrush}">

    </Grid>
</Page>
And here’s the Visual Studio 2022/UWP code:
<Page
    x:Class="Hello.MainPage"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:local="using:Hello"
    xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
    xmlns:mc=http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006
    mc:Ignorable="d"
    Background="{ThemeResource ApplicationPageBackgroundThemeBrush}">

    <Grid>

    </Grid>
</Page>
As you can see, the differences are minor: the code that sets the background color has moved from the <Grid> level to the <Page> level, and instead of being a static resource, it’s now a theme resource. But the Windows 8/Petzold code still works if you want to make that change for some reason.

If you run this blank app as-is in Windows 10/11, you will get a floating app window because Microsoft moved past the Windows 8 full-screen app requirement very quickly.

But you can force the app to emulate Windows 8 by adding a single line of code to the app constructor in app.xaml.cs:
ApplicationView.PreferredLaunchWindowingMode = ApplicationViewWindowingMode.FullScreen;
Now, the app runs full screen as it would have in Windows 8. (Though it remains blank of course.)

Petzold added a TextBlock inside of the Grid in MainPage.xaml to accomplish the “Hello, world!” nature of this simple app:
<TextBlock Text="Hello, Windows 8!"
                   FontFamily="Times New Roman"
                   Font...