Information about PowerShell scripts that you can use to package and deploy the application and then launch it from the Start screen can be found at http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/toolsforwinapps/thread/ 5013262a-2a18-4ce6-99d1-03451d6c9619 . The problem is that it will not help you very far from debugging, which is one of the biggest values โโof a tool like VS. (And don't forget that Blend ... is a great tool for styling and debugging CSS).
I heard that VS was really scared of VS (including me), but the Express Edition for Win8 is easy to use, and the IntelliSense that you get for JS, WinJS and WinRT is extremely useful. And did I mention debugging?
Honestly, when we could write Metro style apps for the first time in December 2010, we only had PowerShell scripts to do all this and actually wrote the code in Notepad. It was very painful ... I had to debug the HTML and script in a browser with F12 tools, but then you could not use the WinRT API. Gradually, VS got better and better, and itโs just worth spending some time training instead of the other IDEs available for the Win8 platform.
Kraig Brockschmidt - MSFT
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