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Introduction
The Microsoft 70-484 certification exam tests your knowledge of designing and developing Windows Store apps. Readers are assumed to be experienced Microsoft Windows-based application developers, including two or more years creating and modifying touch-enabled interfaces.
The exam expects you to be familiar with the high-level concepts required to build such apps, including C# and the Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 environment. Therefore, this book adopts a high-level approach to teaching application design, and provides numerous code samples that illustrate concepts without step-by-step details of building a Windows Store app in Visual Studio. You should be able to design and build Windows Store apps on your own, while using this book to study for the exam.
Success on the 70-484 exam will prove your knowledge and experience in designing and developing Windows Store apps using Microsoft technologies. This exam guide reviews the concepts described in the exam objectives, such as:
Designing Windows Store apps
Developing Windows Store apps
Creating the user interface
Programming the user interaction
Managing security and data
This book covers every exam objective, but it does not cover every exam question. Only the Microsoft exam team has access to the exam questions themselves and Microsoft regularly adds new questions to the exam, making it impossible to cover specific questions. You should consider this book a supplement to your relevant real-world experience and other study materials. If you encounter a topic in this book that you do not feel completely comfortable with, use the links youll find in text to find more information and take the time to research and study the topic. Great information is available on MSDN, TechNet, and in blogs and forums.
Microsoft certifications
Microsoft certifications distinguish you by proving your command of a broad set of skills and experience with current Microsoft products and technologies. The exams and corresponding certifications are developed to validate your mastery of critical competencies as you design and develop, or implement and support, solutions with Microsoft products and technologies both on-premise and in the cloud. Certification brings a variety of benefits to the individual and to employers and organizations.
More Info All Microsoft Certifications
For information about Microsoft certifications, including a full list of available certifications, go to http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/cert-default.aspx .
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Jeff Riley, Box Twelve Communications, for choosing me to write this book, and Kim Lindros for her work as the developmental editor. Kims thorough reviews immensely improved the quality of the book. I would like to thank Damien Foggon, the technical reviewer, for his comments and attention to detail while reviewing the book.
I would also like to thank Carole Jelen, Waterside Publications, for the initial discussions and help in setting up the project, and David Wall ( www.davidwall.com ) for introducing me to Carole and for helping me complete other projects while this book was under way.
Finally, I must thank Tiya and Liana for their understanding and support while I was writing the book through the summer holidays.
Errata & book support
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Preparing for the exam
Microsoft certification exams are a great way to build your resume and let the world know about your level of expertise. Certification exams validate your on-the-job experience and product knowledge. While there is no substitution for on-the-job experience, preparation through study and hands-on practice can help you prepare for the exam. We recommend that you round out your exam preparation plan by using a combination of available study materials and courses. For example, you might use this Exam Ref and another study guide for your at home preparation, and take a Microsoft Official Curriculum course for the classroom experience. Choose the combination that you think works best for you.
Note that this Exam Ref is based on publically available information about the exam and the authors experience. To safeguard the integrity of the exam, authors do not have access to the live exam.
Chapter 1. Design Windows Store apps
The launch of Windows 8 was accompanied with the introduction of Windows Runtime (WinRT), a new framework for building touch-friendly user interfaces (UIs) for Windows Store applications (apps). With WinRT, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight developers could leverage their existing XAML and C#/VB.NET skills to build Windows Store apps. In addition to the new framework and an accompanying toolset, Microsoft introduced a new design language called Microsoft design style.
The conceptual design of an application is the first stage of designing an application. In the conceptual design, you focus on a set of ideas and concepts about what your app should do, how it will behave when users interact with it, and what it should look like. A well-designed application has logical layers loosely coupled with a UI, which is used for presenting the data. Separating logic from presentation enables the application to be enhanced or updated without changing the conceptual design.
You can use design patterns such as Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) to develop maintainable and extensible applications. Data and state preservation across various states of an application is important in providing a great user experience. After you build and test your application, you need to prepare the app for Windows Store certification. Microsoft provides a set of requirements to help you during the app certification process and deployment in the Windows Store.