Nothing is perfect. So the Windows Phone 8 SDK is far from what I like it to be. But the sourcecode is delivered with it. So before you start your own bleeding edge app, copy the whole Sample solution. Rename it to your app, dump everything whats not needed and add or change your own code to it. What I did was changing the HubTile. The Small size cant display text on it. If you change the code of the HubTile.cs you can do it.
I have a Native Windows7 XPS12 laptop with two VHD’s. One VHD is with Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010, the other with Windows 8 enterprise with Visual Studio 2012. The Windows 7 VS2010 VHD was on a SSD. I switched that with the Windows8 VHD. After that I changed the boot sequence and voila easy changing of VHD’s.
DHTML (HTML/CSS/Javascript) comes not with cross browser support out of the box. For that reason its very handy to use ready made HTML/CSS Web Templates that are already tested on several browsers. You can customize those templates, but be carefull use the styling that was used in the original template, dont go your own way, otherwise you loose the cross browser support again. If you need Javascript use a library like jQuery. jQuery is also tested on lots of Browsers. Some of the ready made web templates already have CSS3 support build in. IE8 will ignore those classes but you are already prepared for higher versions of those browsers.
There are several articles about “self explaining code”, they are good jokes 
How good you write code, something it does not tell you is the context. If you have loops the code can explain what you are counting, but not why you are counting. Its difficult to write good comments. If you train yourself you will notice when you look the next day at your comment and your code, the comment is sometime not explainary enough. The best way to write good comments is to start with it! So before you write a function, you start with the comment.
If a build is not working its probably caused because some files are missing on disk. Those files are listed in the project file but not available when the Build is composed. So on your project expand all files and look for the yellow exclamations. Delete or add those files until all exclamations are resolved.
Database navigation in trees can be slow. SQL Server 2008 has a new CLR type for that. Its the HierarchyId. You can’t use this type in LINQ TO SQL or EF but you can make Stored Procedures and use it in there. in L2S or EF you can use those Stored Procedures. This will speed up your queries a lot.
The Microsoft Ajax Minimizer can be configured so that with Compilation the js files are automatically minimized. Don’t put the minimized files in TFS otherwise those files can’t be updated because they are read-only, this is by Design.
1. put this at the end of you webproj file:
2. Include those generated minimized script files in your project.
3. Dont put those generated script files in TFS otherwise they become read-only and can’t be regenerated again.
4. Use a extension function to read DEBUG and use this function for including the .min.js or .js version of your scripts files. When DEBUG use .js files, when RELEASE use .min.js files. That way you also can run-time debug your script .js files.
5. If there are script files in your directory that you dont need in your project (may be already deleted from the project but still there), dump them otherwise they will also be minimized and that takes time.
6. If a script file is NOT minimized that can be caused by a syntax error in your script file, so correct this first.
jQuery 1.6.2 has a bug! If you put a background image in a CSS class and use that class in a Body tag your IE will crash when refreshing the page. If you load the CSS file with that class after jQuery is loaded then everything is Okay.
This is the Blog for tips working with Visual Studio.
