Talking with Chris Bowen, Microsoft Technical Evangelist, on Windows 8 
Programming and resources for programmers.
I’m spending more and more time on my Windows 8 Slate, but I don’t add programs or files to it lightly. There are two reasons for that:
In fact, if I add a utility, it probably means that I was finding it difficult to get my work done without it, and that the utility I added was insanely essential.
In talking with other developers, there seems to be a growing fear that creating an AppBar for Windows 8 is somehow difficult or complex. 
Nothing could be further from true; creating an AppBar is quite straight forward.
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To illustrate this, I’ve created an application that creates a simple app bar and adds a ToggleSwitch to turn on and off the IsSticky attribute. When IsSticky is off (the default) you can dismiss the AppBar by clicking anywhere in the application off the AppBar. When IsSticky is set to true, however, you must make the same gesture you made to get the AppBar to appear (swiping from top down or bottom up) to make it disappear.
The single best place to get your questions answered are the Forums.
(Now, I know that forums are often a company’s way of saving money on customer service, but the dev team and the Evangelists monitor these forums carefully, so it really is a lot quicker than sending email.)
That said, the key to success is to create a question that is likely to be answered.
Talking with Esteban Garcia about ALM, ALM Rangers, SCRUM, Agile and much more. 
There has been a great deal of confusion about the differences between and 
among WinRT, Windows 8, Metro, Metro Applications and etc.
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While there is no reason to be absolutist or pedantic about these differences, if we are going to communicate effectively we need to understand the fundamental differences.
Thus, I offer the following simplifications to get us started…
Win8 provides a number of controls in the XAML toolkit that are easy to use 
and that provide a great deal of flexibility and power. I’ll be writing about some of these controls now and then, starting with some simple and easy to use controls that do a lot of work for you.
The RichEdit box allows the user to open and view and edit a Rich Text document. Rich Text refers to all the text attributes you associate with a word processor but not with a text editor (e.g., bold, color, etc.). The RichEditBox control handles all the work of understanding and presenting the rich text.
Okay, like everyone else I know, I’m writing a book on Win 8. Actually, two books. 
The first, which will be very short, will be on XAML from absolute scratch for Win 8 (not the title!) and the second is Programming Windows 8 with XAML and C# by APress
The first book is forcing me to go back and look at XAML through novice eyes, which is a great exercise in and of itself.
Talking with Jim Holmes about automated testing. Jim is the evangelist for Telerik’s Test
Studio and he is also the Chief Cat Herder for CodeMash.
Talking with Ward Bell about data, web services, Windows 8, XAML, Javascript and much 
more.
Ward is a Microsoft MVP and a founder and VP of IdeaBlade.
There are times when I think my friends in the C# team are just listening to me gripe before adding a cool new feature that solves the problem. (I have never quite outgrown the assumption that the world revolves around me).
Talking with Jeremy Likness, about Windows 8 development, XAML development and the Sterling database.
Jeremy is a Technical Project Manager and Consultant with 
Wintellect, and author of Designing Silverlight Business Applications and the forthcoming Designing Windows 8 Metro Applications with C# and XAML.
