Windows Phone 8 development similar to Silverlight??

[4bh1sh3k]

It's been told many times that Windows Phone 8 is based on WinRT instead of Silverlight. But after installing the SDK, I find that the code looks more Silverlight than WinRT.

eg.
1. Namespace definition:
In Windows 8: xmlns:local="using: PhoneApp1"
In Windows Phone 8: xmlns:local="clr-namespace: PhoneApp1"
2. Page navigation"
In Windows 8: this.Frame.Navigate(typeof(BlankPage));
In Windows Phone 8: this.NavigationService.Navigate(new Uri("/BlankPage.xaml", Urikind.Relative));

Am I missing something?

 

[Catholic Tech Geek]

Windows Phone is based off of Silverlight (so if you are a Silverlight developer, some things should look familiar), so Silverlight concepts are combined with parts of the .NET Framework. You can (still) use XAML to make your user interface (there are some differences between phone and Silverlight, but MSDN, with Bing, can help you sort things out). The storage scheme was changed around for WP8 (WP8 uses the new file system scheme as windows 8, but using Isolated Storage might still work; not 100% sure about Isolated Storage). This is all I can think of for now.

 

[jbigelow]

I started doing Windows 8 development with WinJS and HTML. Now that I am starting to get the hang of it I like the patterns, I wish MSFT would try and make WinJS and WP8 play nice so I had a more consistent development experience. I never learned XAML and Silverlight and HTML5 is nothing like WinJS.

 

[Andre o Botelho]

Yes, WP8 development is based on Silverlight, I'm not a Silverlight programmer so you have to note that there's some differences when you are programing to a SmartPhone system: data, resources, etc..