Desktop Development

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

• Prism 5.0. Learn how to create modular and maintainable WPF applications that are built to last and built for change using patterns such as MVVM and Event Aggregation. Includes 10 samples and library source and associated documentation.
• Developing a Windows Store business app using C#, XAML, and Prism for the Windows Runtime. This release provides guidance for devs who want to create business apps for the Windows 8 Store. It includes a reference implementation that demonstrates how to implement MVVM with navigation and app lifecycle management, manage application data, implement controls, validation, touch, search, tiles, tile notifications, and create accessible and localizable pages. It also provides guidance on testing your app and tuning its performance.
• 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 4.1 for WPF and Silverlight. 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

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

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.