Visual Studio 11 Express will be Metro-only

[Nokurn]

I posted this in IRC last night, but it was around 3 am PDT so I don't think many people saw it.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/1 ... ts/express

Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8 provides tools for Metro style app development. To create desktop apps, you need to use Visual Studio 11 Professional, or higher.

I can't upgrade my license to 11, so I'm glad I didn't use the beta long enough to get accustomed to it. I'll be sticking to 2010. I'd ditch VS completely and switch to Clang if the debugger wasn't so far beyond anything else at the moment.

[Nokurn]

Microsoft realized that they're morons. There will be a 2012 Express edition for Windows Desktop according to this blog post.

[JarrodParkes]

Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8 provides tools for Metro style app development. To create desktop apps, you need to use Visual Studio 11 Professional, or higher.

I am probably out of the loop, hence my asking this question. But is Windows moving towards this sort of "every program is a quasi-app" like Apple seems to be doing? If not, what platform is "Metro style app" targeting? Just the Windows phone(s)?

Thanks in advance, this is good information to know.

[Nokurn]

Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows 8 provides tools for Metro style app development. To create desktop apps, you need to use Visual Studio 11 Professional, or higher.

I am probably out of the loop, hence my asking this question. But is Windows moving towards this sort of "every program is a quasi-app" like Apple seems to be doing? If not, what platform is "Metro style app" targeting? Just the Windows phone(s)?

Thanks in advance, this is good information to know.

I am not sure what you mean by "quasi-app."

"Metro-style apps" target the Metro environment, which is like Windows Phone for the desktop. Metro is a different desktop environment for Windows; think GNOME and KDE for Linux--or more appropriately, GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 or KDE 3 and KDE 4 (ie. one version is good for productivity, the other is good for fuck knows what). I'm not really the best person to explain Metro and its "role" in Windows 8, since I'm highly biased against it.

[JarrodParkes]

I think you hit it on the head with your explanation. I wasn't really sure what I meant by quasi-app either... I think the explanation of the Metro environment was what I was trying to figure out the most.