As a .NET developer for AppUp, I am very please that Intel has officially released the long awaited .NET AppUp SDK library. At last there is an elegant solution to allow us to submit our .NET offerings into the AppUp Center with ease. You are no longer required to create or purchase your own .NET wrapper for the C++ AppUp SDK. This offering removes the worry of whether or not your .NET title is implementing the AppUp authorization calls correctly. For those of you who are altogether too excited to read through this entire announcement, please click the link below to download the .NET AppUp SDK:

Download SDK

The .NET AppUp SDK includes all of the C++ methods for authorization, instrumentation and crash reporting. There are also very descriptive exception types including UnauthorizedException, AdpRunTimeException and more to allow for a robust error handling implementation. What’s more is that the SDK assembly (AdpLibrary.dll) is only 52KB, that is a lot of functionality in a small package.

It really is that easy

The .NET AppUp SDK includes very thorough documentation which includes implementation details as well as code examples in C# and VB.NET. Code examples also differentiate between standard Winforms and WPF projects. Even a beginning .NET developer can be up and running within minutes.

I wanted to show you just how easy the .NET SDK is to implement by sharing a 24 line example comprising an entire .NET Console Project. * Note: This project while functional is far from complete. Please reference the .NET SDK Developer Guide for a complete reference

That’s not all, introducing the AppUp Software Development Kit Visual Studio Plug-in

Intel has also released an exciting Visual Studio 2008 plug-in. The AppUp Software Development Kit plug-in puts many of the Web Dashboard (http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/dashboard/myapps) tasks we use at our fingertips inside the Visual Studio 2008 IDE. You can start a new application submission, check validation progress and more.

That’s not all; it also allows you to create a pre-made AppUp project using a simple wizard style interface. This provides and excellent starting point for new development as the result the required AppUp authorization calls. The AppUp Debugger is also easily accessed from the AppUp Software Development Kit toolbar, making local testing simple.

.NET and AppUp

There are many reasons to be excited about this SDK release. By allowing .NET titles into AppUp, the door is opened to the various benefits that come with a managed runtime. You have the potential for quick time to market due to the nature of the .NET programming language, and a vast array of resources in established developer community with a wealth of experience. In my experience there is not another marketplace for .NET titles in the mobile lifestyle space that comes as complete and as easy to use as AppUp.

Applications of all types may be built using .NET from social media utilities that live in the tray to complete business suites. A good example of this is Twitter for Netbooks. This application needed to look good, and make use of the Twitter* Web Services API. I was able to satisfy those requirements thanks to the familiarity of the C# language and WPF's nack for making clean UI's. This was done in far shorter time than it would have taken for a C++ equivalent.

If you have been in the market for developer talent, you will have noticed that there is no shortage of C# and VB.NET developers. This means that as your .NET AppUp project grows, you will have a large pool of individuals to choose from. The last estimate of the number of .NET developers in the world topped out at over 5 million.

What does this mean for porting projects?

Say you have a .NET title that is already in production that you want to monetize quickly and easily. By integrating the .NET AppUp SDK you can leverage existing code and deliver your offering to a secure marketplace (i.e. AppUp). The initial integration of the AppUp authorization and error logging methods will in all likelihood take less time than lunch at your favorite restaurant. By following the examples outlined in the provided SDK documentation you will be well on your way to submitting your title.

The next step is to consider your title in relation to the netbook platform, after all it is much more than just another laptop. The netbook is a mobile lifestyle device and as such there are certain considerations to be made when porting. I encourage you to review this post for more on envisioning your title on the netbook:

http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/article/conceptualizing-your-ported-...

Once you are satisfied that the user experience will be acceptable, you are on to the AppUp submission process. For additional resources please visit the porting section of the AppUp community.

http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/porting

WPF for UI design

Now that we have .NET available to us in AppUp, we can leverage WPF. For those who are new to .NET, WPF stands for Windows Presentation Foundation; it offers rapid user interface development and many appealing features that the traditional Winforms project lack, such as re-usable styles and smooth animation. WPF is quickly becoming the project type of choice for many AppUp developers porting Android applications, as both use an easy to read XML markup for UI layout.

It is also worth mentioning that WPF is hardware accelerated, and as such takes some of the load off of the ATOM CPU. I have seen a number of recess computing style games developed using WPF with great success. Titles in the educational category could also greatly benefit from a WPF implementation.

Stick to .NET 3.5

While .NET 4.0 is being seen more often lately, we cannot count on the customers netbook having it installed. Therefore we must target .NET 3.5. The good news is that for most .NET developers, everything we really need (LINQ, Generics, etc.) are including in the 3.5 runtime.

Some of you may be wondering why we cannot just bundle the .NET 4.0 runtime with our MSI. Per the Validation Guidelines, any dialogue box prompting the user to click on it will result in a validation failure. I would surmise that support for .NET 4.0 will be added in a future release of the .NET AppUp SDK.

Existing .NET Wrappers

Many developers in the AppUp community have developed their own .NET Wrappers in order to submit their applications prior to this release. Myself being one of them, I must share that the migration to the official .NET AppUp SDK is painless. I will further divulge that they have delivered more in this release in terms of features and reliability than any of the .NET wrappers I had the opportunity to test (including my own). None of the wrappers I tested made use of custom crash reporting, which is an amazing feature in itself. Migration is as simple as copy and paste, then test locally using the AppUp SDK Debugger.