Desktop development covers guidance for building the user experience portion of a solution. This includes guidance for building client-side applications, mobile device applications, Web applications, and rich internet applications (RIA). You will find guidance on building composite Windows Forms desktop and mobile applications, on building offline-capable applications, on application deployment, and on Web client application development.

Active Releases

• Developing an end-to-end Windows Store app using C++ and XAML: Hilo (Windows). This guide discusses the design and implementation of Hilo, a photo app for Windows 8. Hilo teaches you how to use a modern coding style, asynchronous programming, and the Windows Runtime to build a world-ready app for the global market. It shows how to implement tiles, pages, controls, touch, navigation, file system queries, suspend/resume, and localization and how to use common architectural patterns such as Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) and Model-View-Presenter (MVP). Hilo also demonstrates how to test your app and tune its performance.
• Developing an end-to-end Windows Store app using JavaScript: Hilo (Windows). The JavaScript version of the Hilo photo sample provides guidance to JavaScript developers who want to create a Windows 8 app using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, the Windows Runtime, and modern development patterns. Hilo comes with source code and documentation.
• Prism. Prism provides best practice guidance for building Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight, and Windows Phone client applications. Prism focuses on the patterns that support composite, extensible applications and test-driven development. It includes re-usable code and components, comprehensive documentation, QuickStarts, How-to topics, and a sample reference implementation. Version 4 of Prism was released in November 2010.
• Smart Client Architecture and Design Guide — June 2004

Retired Releases

• Smart Client Software Factory. The Smart Client Software Factory provides guidance on building modular Windows Forms applications. The current version of this guidance targets Visual Studio 2010.
• Smart Client Software Factory — May 2007 for Visual Studio 2005
• Composite Application Guidance for WPF — June 2008
• Mobile Client Software Factory — July 2006
• Smart Client - Composite UI Application Block - December 2005
• Updater Application Block - Version 2.0 - March 2005
• User Interface Process (UIP) Application Block - Version 2.0 - April 2004
• Smart Client Offline Application Block - February 2004
• Design and Implementation Guidelines for Web Clients - November 2003
• User Interface Process Application Block - June 2003

Please refer to the patterns & practices: Retired section for all retired offerings.

Page last updated February 2012

About Microsoft patterns & practices

Recommendations on how to design and develop custom applications using the Microsoft platform.

By using patterns & practices offerings, you can accelerate the design and development of your custom applications, reduce project technical risk, and position yourself to take advantage of future Microsoft technologies. Each patterns & practices offering contains a combination of written documentation and re-usable source code. Many also include a reference implementation. This combination provides you with a solid starting point for your application, and a set of proven practices to aid your development.

For more information, visit the patterns & practices Developer Center.