CODEWITHSUNDEEP
winapimicrosoft-metro
jsist
jsist

Reputation: 5253

Transforming exe to Metro App

I had developed an application using Win32 C++ API(around 2 years back, which works fine with XP, Vista and Windows 7). For Windows 8, I want to have my same application in Metro Style.

To elaborate, I want my application to run in Metro App style, rather then going back to desktop and executing from there.

I searched a lot on Google, but could not find anything that can save effort. It seems, I will have to re-program my application for Metro-style.

If there is any setting or any tool, i am missing, Please suggest.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1695

Answers (2)

WiredPrairie
WiredPrairie

Reputation: 59763

Depending on the functionality of your application and its requirements, it may be a massive rewrite. There is no tool to convert. The development, deployment, and UI/UX paradigms are all very different from a traditional Win32/Desktop application. It's somewhat intentional that you can't easily take an Win32 application and just make it run in the touch based Modern UI/Metro shell.

Even your C++ business logic code will need to be refactored potentially depending on what it was doing as a Windows 8 Modern UI application is sandboxed substantially more than a desktop application.

There's not as much great documentation about how to create a Modern UI application using C++ as there is for C#/XAML and JavaScript/HTML. There's a pretty decent overview of the process (and things that are new and different) in this tutorial/walkthrough on MSDN.

Here's the language reference for C++/CX (C++ component extensions) needed for WinRT C++ applications.

Honestly, depending on what you created and how much can be reused, it might be easier to switch platforms (like to C#/XAML for example).

Upvotes: 2

N_A
N_A

Reputation: 19897

You might be able to reuse some business logic, but the whole of the UI will need to be rewritten by hand. The metro UI is xaml or html based, so if you used WPF you might get some partial reuse, but otherwise there is no way to convert old UIs to metro.

Upvotes: 2

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