CHAPTER 1 THE PHILOSOPHY OF .NET
Both Mono and Portable.NET provide an ECMA-compliant C# compiler, .NET runtime engine, code
samples, documentation, as well as numerous development tools that are functionally equivalent to the
tools that ship with Microsoft’s .NET Framework 4.5 SDK.
Note An introduction to creating cross-platform .NET applications using Mono can be found in Appendix A.
A Brief Word Regarding Windows 8 Applications
To close this chapter, allow me to briefly comment on how the Microsoft .NET platform relates to a
brand-new set of technologies introduced with the Windows 8 operating system. If you have not yet had
time to explore Windows 8, let me just say that the new user interface is radically different than any
previous version of Microsoft Windows (in fact, I’d say it is as radical as the shift from Windows 3.11 to
Windows 95—for those of you old enough to remember). Figure 1-11 illustrates the new start screen of
Windows 8 OS.
Figure 1-11. The Windows 8 start screen
As seen in Figure 1-11, the Windows 8 start screen supports a tiled layout, where each tile represents
an application installed on the machine. Unlike a typical Windows desktop application, Windows 8
applications are built for touch-screen interactions. They are also run in full-screen renderings and lack
the usual “chrome” (e.g., menu systems, status bars, and toolbar buttons) we see in many desktop
applications. Figure 1-12 shows a partial view of a Windows 8 weather application.
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