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Part 1: Create a new app

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[ This article is for Windows 8.x and Windows Phone 8.x developers writing Windows Runtime apps. If you’re developing for Windows 10, see the latest documentation ]

In this step, learn how to create a new project, and explore the Visual Studio development environment.

Before you start

This walkthrough assumes that you’re going to test your app on the Windows Phone emulator. If you want to test your app on a phone, you have to take some additional steps. For more info, see Register your Windows Phone.

The steps in this topic assume that you’re using Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows. You may see some variations in window layouts or menu commands if you’re using Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2013 or a higher edition, or if you’ve already customized the layout or menus in Visual Studio.

Create the project

The first step in creating a Windows Phone app is to create a new project in Visual Studio.

To create the project

  1. Make sure you’ve downloaded and installed the Windows Phone SDK. For more information, see Get the SDK.

  2. Launch Visual Studio from the Windows Start screen. If the Registration window appears, you can register the product, or you can temporarily dismiss the prompt.

  3. Create a new project by selecting the FILE | New | Project menu command.

  4. In the New Project window, expand the installed Visual C# or Visual Basic templates, and then expand Store Apps. Select the Windows Phone Apps templates.

  5. In the list of Windows Phone Apps templates, select the Blank App (Windows Phone) template.

  6. At the bottom of the New Project window, type MiniBrowser as the Name of the project.

  7. Click OK. The new project is created, and opens in Visual Studio. You see the following items:

    • The main window contains the code editor and displays App.xaml.cs or App.xaml.vb. In this code file you can define global event handlers.
    • The right pane includes Solution Explorer, which lists the files in the project.

  8. In Solution Explorer, double-click MainPage.xaml to open it. This page contains the user interface for the first page of your app. The main window is divided into two parts:

    • The right pane contains the XAML markup that defines the user interface for the page.
    • The left pane contains a skin that shows the output of the XAML markup.

    The associated code-behind page, MainPage.xaml.cs or MainPage.xaml.vb, which contains the code to handle user interaction with the page, is not opened or displayed by default.

Summary

Congratulations, you're done with the first step of building your first Windows Phone Store app! You learned how to create a new project and you explored the Visual Studio development environment.

Next step

In the next step of this tutorial, you learn how to lay out the controls for the simple user interface of your app. Go to Part 2: Lay out the user interface.