Last week, Microsoft launched its new Windows 8 app development blog site with a discussion on what had changed for app makers between the release of the Windows 8 Developer Preview and the new Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Today, the app development blog has posted the second part of that discussion with even more information for app creators.
Once again, the blog post is highly technical and is mainly for programmers. One of the topics discussed this time is tile and toast notifications for Metro apps. The blog states that the Windows 8 Consumer preview now lets app maker use the periodic tile notification API for apps that use cloud services. The API tells Windows to check out the cloud server to update the tile content on the Metro app.
The blog post also gives information for app developers who want to make Metro apps via JavaScript. Microsoft says it has improved the performance of JavaScript IntelliSense in Windows 8 and has also improved the JavaScript debugging and diagnostic tools.
Other improvements mentioned in the blog include changing the HTML AppBar for easier use by developers and being able to create Metro style apps with a combination of programming languages in Visual Studio.