Some observations on managed Windows 8 metro applications

This is an unstructured list of interesting things I found when playing with the new metro applications.

While HTML5/JS metro applications always run in a host process WWAHost.exe (Windows Web Application Host?), .NET apps does not, they run directly in its own process:

When deployed locally from the Visual Studio, applications (both HTML5/JS and .NET) are stored within the folder AppxLayouts in the user folder. It is interesting that XAML and content files are not embedded as resources in the executable but they are left alone:

As the WinRT is native, every external event such as Click comes from the blackbox:

If we look at modules currently loaded when a managed application is running:

we’ll find some interesting things:

• despite the fact that in a Metro app you may use only a subset of the full .NET, it looks like some of the full .NET modules are loaded (mscorlib.dll, System.Runtime.dll, System.Linq.dll, System.Core.dll, System.dll, System.Xml.dll and others), so a managed application obviously does not only forward calls to the native WinRT,
• of course, a number of WinRT modules are loaded (with .winmd extensions)

.NET 4.5 assembly references are evident if we look at the application from the Reflector: