When Microsoft announced support for universal Windows apps I wanted to see how easy it would be to develop one app for both Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1, so I thought I would create a TDL reader app. Universal apps are not strictly one app for both platforms, it’s more like one project in Visual Studio with shared resources and code. You can then link the Windows and Windows Phone apps so users only pay for the app once if you charge for the app. So you have code sharing but you still develop the UI for both platforms, its relativity straight forward and should help developers to build for both platforms and more importantly save users from having to pay twice for apps on Windows Phone and Windows.

So I have created a TDL News app that enables viewing of the latest news from the site as well as viewing TDL reviews and our latest videos on YouTube. There is also a live page that has our chatroom and live feed we use during the recordings of podcasts. The app has offline viewing support so you can load the app open a page and then it caches it for reading offline.

As it’s a universal app it’s available for Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1 for free.

 

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