Metro UI Guidelines vs Real Windows 8 Metro App

Windows 8 Metro Applications run in an AppContainer, whereas any application (web or desktop) created with the Metro UI design guidelines does not run in an AppContainer. They may be running in a browser or directly as an exe on System32 under the logged in user credential.

I have seen people a bit confused between "An Application Designed with UI Guidelines of Metro" and in "METRO APPLICATION" itself. To make my point more clear let us visit this site.



If you see this TechED India site is beautifully designed and adheres to Metro UI design guidelines. Although it is following all the UI guidelines of Metro, it cannot be called a METRO APP. Then the next question you may ask ia what is a Metro App then?

Let us create a simple Hello World Metro Application.  I am creating Hello World Metro Application using HTML and JavaScript.



There is nothing fancy about the above application but a Hello World Text in H1 tag.

New to Metro Application Development? Read here

Hit F5 to run the application. While the application is running open the Task Manager. To open the Task Manger press Ctr+Alt+Del. In the Task Manger you can see your application is listed in the Application tab.



Click on the Details tab and you can see a program called WMAHost.exe is running. Microsoft WMA Host is responsible for running Metro Applications in a Windows 8 machine.

The point I am trying to make here is that when you run a website adhering to Metro UI guidelines it is run through a browser in your Windows 8 machine. Whereas a Windows 8 Metro Application is run by the program WMAHost.exe. This program runs in a sandbox rather than user login to the Windows 8 machine. To understand it more download and install ProcessExplorer.exe. Open Process Explorer and in the Integrity tab you can see Windows 8 Metro Application run in an App Container.

Here you see that Windows 8 Metro Application runs in an AppContainer and this is the major difference between any applications created with the UI guidelines of Metro and Windows 8 Metro Applications. I hope now it is clear to you what the difference is between Windows 8 Metro applications and applications adhering to UI guidelines of Metro.

Thanks for reading.