It was very interesting to talk with a Microsoft developer about the requirements that needs to be met for a Metro style app in the Windows 8 app store. There are very high standards especially regarding the look & feel of the application.

At the moment I especially want to get a HTML5-based vocabulary trainer ready for Windows 8. As a result of this App Excellence Lab I got a token that I can use to register at the Windows 8 app store before the official start. Additionally registration is free with this token for two years.

Did you attend to a Windows 8 App Excellence Lab, too?

The speaker explained some details about the new operating system and especially the new Metro apps from a developer perspective. Although it still was interesting, I expected some more new information in such a seminar.

Anyway, it was great to meet some friends again and catering was good, too.

Did you attend to this event, too?

But why is the digital signature of binary files so important?

If a binary file is digitally signed the user, who wants to execute the file, can make sure it is the original file and it was not modified in any way. Additionally Windows Vista and Windows 7 User Account Control displays

instead of this ugly message box:Beside that also app store systems like Intel AppUp require that your setups are being digitally signed.

To start you will first need a code signing certificate. If you are a developer in the Intel AppUp program, you get this directly from the AppUp developer website. Otherwise you can get cheap certificates from Comodo here: http://codesigning.ksoftware.net

After you have received your code signing certificate, you can use a small GUI application for signing binary files.

Or, if you don’t like GUI applications or want to include the signing into your build process, you can create a small batch file like this and just drag & drop the binary file that you want to sign on this batch file (or pass it as parameter):

signtool.exe sign /f "certificate.pfx" /p "password" /t "http://timestamp.verisign.com/scripts/timstamp.dll" "%1"

Obviously you need to exchange certificate.pfx with the file name of your certificate (which should be placed in the same directory as the batch file and the file signtool.exe) and password with your certificate password that you have chosen while exporting it from your web browser. To get the file signtool.exe, you need to download the free Microsoft Windows SDK.

Here are some frequently asked questions on code signing certificates and digital signature.

Do you already digitally sign your binary files, too?

• English
• French
• German
• Spanish

As I do have a lot of German apps, too, I’ll start to submit them to AppUp now. Obviously there won’t be much downloads of the German apps at the moment, because Intel needs to fill the store with apps first, before they can start to distribute the store to end customers. But I’m confident that when distributed there will be good download counts as for the English system then.

Intel AppUp is an app store for netbooks and tablets. The user can directly download, install and – in case of paid apps – buy products from the AppUp app store.

But why Intel thinks it will be successful with yet another app store?

Of course, there won’t be many people that download the AppUp client software that is necessary to use the app store from the AppUp webpage. But in cooperation with Intel’s hardware partners the AppUp client will get pre-installed on many netbook and tablet devices. That’s the way Intel will spread this client to as many users as possible.

But why that’s interesting for me as a developer?

I’m always searching for a new distribution channel for my products and as it’s very easy to get an app into the AppUp store, I’ll just try that.

More about that and the validation process in another post.