Video: Azure Toolkit Preview

This revised toolkit (initially released for Windows 8 Developer Preview on 9/14/2011) has all the tools to make it easy to develop a Windows Azure service and deploy it to your users. In addition to documentation, this toolkit includes Visual Studio project templates for a sample Metro style app and a Windows Azure cloud project. This tool is designed to accelerate development so that developers can start enabling Windows 8 features, such as notifications, for their app with minimal time and experience. You can download the toolkit here, or watch a 4-minute demo below.

The core features of the toolkit include:

• Automated Install – Scripted install of all dependencies including Visual Studio 2010 Express and the Windows Azure SDK on Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
• Project Templates – Windows 8 Metro Style app project templates in Dev 11 in both XAML/C# and HTML5/JS with a supporting C# Windows Azure Project for Visual Studio 2010.
• NuGet Packages – Throughout the development of the project templates we have extracted the functionality into NuGet Packages for Push Notifications and the Sample ACS scenarios. You can find the packages here and full source in the toolkit under /Libraries.
• Samples – Five sample applications demonstrating different ways Windows 8 Metro Style apps can use ACS and Push Notifications
• Documentation – Extensive documentation including install, file new project walkthrough, samples and deployment to Windows Azure.