Summary

In this chapter, I introduced three important structural features for a Metro app: AppBars, flyouts, and the navigation model. These facilities start to bridge the gap between a generic web app and the tools for decomposing your application into manageable chunks.

You don't have to use AppBars and flyouts, but your application won't fit into the Metro model if you don't. Part of the attraction of Metro is to be able to use your HTML5 and JavaScript skills to create Windows applications. Creating an app that doesn't follow the Metro conventions is to miss the opportunity that Windows 8 presents to the web programmer.

Equally, you could elect to build your Metro app using a single HTML document. But, once again, this would be a missed opportunity. The constraints that drive web apps toward content consolidation don't exist for Metro apps, which means that the ease of development, testing, and maintenance that come from decomposing your content and code are worth exploring. The HTMLControl and pages features are key enablers to this development style.