So what is the best FREE Hackathon tool - Windows App Studio

At Build last week we launched a new tool  Windows App Studio Beta.

With Windows App Studio you can build universal Windows app projects that results in an app for Windows Phone and Windows, all in a single session.

This is the perfect tools of Student Hackathons combined with a  FREE DreamSpark Subscription which includes a FREE developer accounts for both Windows Phone and Windows 8.

You can build and publish apps directly to the Windows 8 and Windows Phone Store in the shortest possible period of time.

Getting Started and Creating your first app with Windows App Studio

Windows App Studio give you the ability to switch/toggle between Windows Phone and a Windows, this automatically updates your app view to see how the changes will be reflected on-screen, based on the device type. You can even make changes to your dynamic App Studio content hosted in the cloud and push to both Windows Phone and Windows users when they launch your app. And all from within the Windows App Studio Beta website. So no IDE or software is required to be installed on your PC or MAC 

When you generate your app, you’ll notice that you can still download the app directly to your Windows device, you can download packages to publish, or you can download the original source code for Windows Phone 8.0, Windows Phone 8.1, and Windows 8.1 apps and make modification in Visual Studio IDE which off course is FREE via www.dreamspark.com

Creating an app from an existing web page  

You can still start your project from scratch, called an “Empty App”, or start with one of dozens of templates. New in this release, we’ve added the ability to build a template that allows you to create a Windows 8 or Windows Phone app from an existing website.

What is really cool about this is you can and add native controls we call this type of app a WebApp. and this enhancement is developed from our Open Source Project Web Application Template which allows you take any existing responsive web site into a Windows 8 or Windows Phone app see https://wat.codeplex.com 

But with Windows App Studio we make this really simple for all users by simply entering the URL of the mobile website, you can create a Web App Template (WAT) for Windows Phone directly within Windows AppStudio without having to use Visual Studio. .

If you have already used App Studio to create an existing App you can easily update the App to support both Windows 8 and Windows Phone.

If you have already created a Windows Phone app using App Studio, it’s easy to also create a Windows app.

Publishing your Apps to Store

If you are planning to publish to the Store, you’ll first need to register for a Dev Center account ($19 USD annual registration fee or FREE for students via DreamSpark).

To Setup your FREE developer account Get your FREE Registration Code

You will need to reserve a name for your app—just go to Dev Center to reserve the App Name, and then place the App Identity, App Display Name, Publisher ID, and Publisher Name (as it appears in Dev Center) in your App Studio project. This places the necessary data in your app manifest, which is needed for app submission. We have added support for this directly on the Publish Info page in App Studio.

Be sure to invest time to create an app title, app description, and image for your app tile that will capture the attention of your target audience. Then, you’re ready to publish in the Store.

So if your looking at building a portfolio of apps or have a hackathon download Windows App Studio Beta.

You will be amazed at  just how easy it is to get started creating apps for Windows and Windows Phone.