In the
Managing app lifecycle post, Adam Barrus described the new app lifecycle introduced in Windows 8.
The most common question we hear is “what if my app has to do something important when it is not on screen, for example, download a file or email or play music”?
In this two part series, I’ll tell you about the different types of activities that an app can do when it’s in the background and show some code examples to that support these scenarios.
Windows 8 background model
Efficient battery usage has been one of the fundamental building blocks in the design of Windows 8 and its app model. Pat Stemen’s
post on the Building Windows 8 blog goes in depth into why this is such an important factor in the design of Windows 8 and describes some of the techniques that we’ve incorporated in the system for increased battery life. As you can imagine, one of the biggest factors that determine the battery life of a device is the apps that run on them. And with this in mind, we designed the Windows 8 app lifecycle for maximum battery life. But that doesn’t mean the app model precludes background activities. This post explains the background scenarios supported in Windows 8. For more info about this approach, see Ben Srour’s and Sharif Farag’s post
Improving power efficiency for applications on the Building Windows 8 blog.
