Toolkits for Windows 8 Development
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With Windows 8 now formally launched, it's time to get your hands dirty working on it. 

A number of extensions and toolkits have been built and released on various sites to enable developers achieve better productivity and faster development. Here are some of them:

**Callisto: A toolkit for XAML Windows 8 Store apps**

Built by Tim Heuer, it is a toolkit of sorts for XAML-based Windows 8 Store apps.  He started it  during the Consumer Preview and has put it up on github. 

[https://github.com/timheuer/callisto][1]

As of today, Callisto includes a Flyout, a Menu, MenuItem, an in-app tile experience with LiveTile, an effect called Tilt to provide tilting experience when clicked on edges/corners, converters such as BooleanToVisibilityConverter, RelativeTimeConverter, and LengthToBooleanConverter. Callisto can be downloaded from github or can be used through Visual Studio 2012 as an extension or through NuGet. A few people who have actually used this tool have it given it great feedback and reviews.

**WinRT XAML Toolkit**

The Windows Runtime (WinRT) XAML Toolkit can be found at Codeplex and contains a number of controls and helpers that help you build Windows 8 Store applications.

This toolkit includes integrated extensions from the AsyncUI library that add support for async/await tasks, controls such as CameraCaptureControl, CascadingTextBlock, Chart,    ImageButton, InputDialog and more. It also includes Control extensions, debugging helpers, IO helpers and so forth. It can be downloaded via NuGet or the codeplex page.  

[http://winrtxamltoolkit.codeplex.com/][2]

**Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8**

This toolkit makes it easy to build a cloud service to support rich Windows Store apps. It has all the tools to enable easier development of a Windows Azure service and deploy it to users. The toolkit includes Visual Studio project templates for a sample Windows Store app and a Windows Azure cloud project. 

http://watwindows8.codeplex.com/


**Windows 8 apps: Multilingual App Toolkit** 

This toolkit is an extension for Visual Studio 2012 helps you localize your Windows app with translation support, translation file management, and editor tools.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/hh848309.aspx

**Simple Mvvm Toolkit for Visual Studio 2012**

This Toolkit provides an easy approach to create Silverlight and WPF apps using MVVM. It comprises helper classes, templates, code snippets, and so forth. It is available as a Visual Studio 2012 [extension][3]. 


  [1]: https://github.com/timheuer/callisto
  [2]: http://winrtxamltoolkit.codeplex.com/
  [3]: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/c918fb1a-c1bf-4891-8489-def3bc300ab0?SRC=Home