Last year I wrote an article for Visual Studio Magazine entitled Enterprise Distribution of Windows Phone Applications which looks at the requirements and steps required to deploy Windows Phone applications. The process for distributing Windows desktop/slate applications is slightly different but essentially involves signing the appx with an appropriate code signing certificate that is trusted by those computers that the application will be distributed to. We’re using these same techniques with Build it Beta to help developers distribute their applications for testing. Recently we’ve done a number of bug fixes and improvements and now have support for Windows Phone 8.0, Windows Phone 8.1 (Silverlight), Windows Phone 8.1 (Appx), Windows 8.0 and 8.1, and now Windows 10 applications. There is still a bit of work to go in rounding off some of the rough edges but we’re really keen for developers to start using it.
We’ve also just created a new Build it Beta blog where we will be posting a series of post talking about distribution of applications for testing both in the generic sense (covering signing and enterprise distribution) and of course how Build it Beta works. Don’t forget you can follow Build it Beta on Twitter as well.