Currently I think the best toolset for developing apps and demos for Windows Phone 8.0 and 8.1 is definitely Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition combined with the 8.0 and 8.1 SDKs. Here on this page of my journal I am going to document useful resources that help with developing for the platform. This list of mine is going to be updated when I find new resources. If I am missing any useful ones, please contact me through the usual channels and I’ll add it to the list.
Documentation
- Windows 8 Development
- The official mainpage of Windows 8 learning documentation
- WinJS API
- Windows Library for Javascript documentation (Windows Phone 8.1 was the only release to support Native JS apps)
- Windows Phone Dev Center (Archived)
Frameworks / Engines
- Unity 5.6 Documentation - Windows Phone 8.1
- Babylon.JS 2.5 Documentation (Archived)
- BabylonJS works with Windows Phone 8.1 Native JS apps. 3.0 is probably the latest version that works fine out of the box.
- Babylon.JS 3.0 Documentation (Archived)
- If you want to use glTF 2.0 like I do, this is your best bet unless you are able to transpile a later release. 3.1 is still ES5 compatible, but the glTF loader in that works differently.
- BabylonJS Game Engine Tutorial Series (YouTube)
- Old tutorial series by Games From Scratch. Works with WP8.1 Native JS apps.
Books
- Windows Phone 8 Development Internals by Andrew Whitechapel & Sean McKenna
Others
- How to Start Developing for Old Windows Phone
- My notes about how to get the toolchain running for WP8.1
- WindowsPhone.com (Archived)
- The original and official end user focused portal