[This documentation is preliminary and is subject to change.]

Metro style apps are full screen apps tailored to your users' needs, tailored to the device they run on, tailored for touch interaction, and tailored to the Windows user interface. Windows helps you interact with your users, and your users interact with your app. Read this article to learn about Metro style apps and the basics of developing great apps.

Apps are tailored to your users

The experience users have when using Metro style apps is:

Immersive Your Metro style apps fill the entire screen and immerse users in the experience you create. Your users can be completely engaged with the content they love, in a full screen app. We moved the operating system out of the way to maximize screen space for your content. Your apps are the center of the Windows experience. Take advantage of the space but don't clutter it. Let your users focus on the things they want to do.

Engaging and alive Your Metro style apps engage users with the info they are interested in and the people they care about. Live tiles update users at a glance and draw them into your app.

The Start screen is about showing off what apps are great at. App tiles are alive with status and activity updates, encouraging your users to dive into your app. When designing your tile, you need to:

• Highlight your brand. Your app tile is a chance to visually define your brand for your users. It should be attractive and distinct.
• Showcase the info and activities your users are most interested in. You want your users to keep returning to your tile, looking for updates, checking in. You want those updates to pull your users back into the app itself. The more thoughtful you are about the kinds of info and activities you showcase, the more likely users are to engage.

For more info on designing and creating an app tile, see Guidelines and checklist for tiles and Guidelines and checklist for notifications.

Connected Your users can share content with their social circles and send content to devices they are connected to. Learn more at Searching, sharing, and connecting (JavaScript).

Interactive and touch-first You design your apps for touch and physical manipulation, and Windows gives you keyboard, mouse, and graphical scaling support for free. To learn more, see Designing for touch and Responding to user interaction.

Great in multiple views & on multiple form factors Apps use controls that support "fluid" layout, so content flows naturally and adapts to the available space on devices of the users' choosing. The platform provides automatic scaling to make it easy to design for multiple resolutions and screen orientation. Learn more about Designing for different form factors.

Confidence-inspiring Your users can safely download, install, use, update, and uninstall your apps, without making irreversible changes to Windows or to their other apps.

Designed for user multitasking

While apps immerse your users in a full screen environment, Windows also makes it possible for them to multitask.

• Snapped view Your users love doing more than one thing at once! They want to use your app while they chat, surf the web, watch a movie, or do their taxes, so make your snap view useful and maintain context when going between snapped and unsnapped.
• Filled view Hey, users might snap another app and keep your app in the fill space. Account for reduced horizontal screen space to accommodate this view.

The developer experience is tailored to you

Developers get benefits, too:

Your choice of programming languages You can create your app in the languages you're most comfortable with: JavaScript with HTML5 and CSS3, or C++/C#/VB with XAML. To learn more about Windows Runtime and your language options, see The Windows Runtime.

New deployment method Your users can safely and simply install your apps. Removal is just as safe and simple, and won't lead to degradation of system performance over time.

• Metro style app packaging You package your apps for deployment as Metro style app packages. With Metro style apps, all apps are installed per user; they install, update, and uninstall cleanly; and they don’t change the operating system in an irreversible way.
• Windows Store (not yet released)

New UI and touch-centered input You can create apps with controls that put your users' goals first, that support direct manipulation of UI elements.

Localization You can develop your app once and deploy in multiple locales and multiple languages. Not only that, Windows Developer Preview provides an API that ensures your app responds to users' language and cultural preferences—like date, time, number, and currency formats—with little to no effort on your part. The end result is a great app with a coherent cultural experience tailored to each user and to all users everywhere. Learn more about Globalizing your app.

Developer tools With free versions of Microsoft Expression Blend and Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Developer Preview, you get a development environment and templates that help you design, develop, package, debug, and deploy your app.

Build date: 9/16/2011