Question

Is it possible to develop Windows 8 apps using Windows 7?

According to the page http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/hh852363.aspx#Requirements

Windows 7 is supported, by the SDK. I downloaded it.

Now I want to download visual studio (free, that’s express, right?), but found only this:

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads#vs

According to this:

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/products/compatibility

It should run on Windows 7. The only free download I found is Express “for Windows 8” –

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads#express-win8

And yeah, it runs only on Windows 8.

What do I have to download to develop for Windows 8 on Windows 7?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The Windows 8 SDK by itself is not an IDE like Visual Studio. Nor does it come with a compiler. So yes, you can install it on Windows 7, but you won’t be able to do much with it unless you are willing to do a lot of work. You won’t have any templates or things like that. The simplest way to build Windows Store apps (formerly referred to as Metro style) is to use Visual Studio and/or Blend running on a Windows 8 machine – running directly on a machine (recommended) or in a virual environment.