If you have been paying attention to any of the Windows 8/Metro stuff that has come out sense BUILD you may have noticed that with Windows 8/Metro application developers can now easily light up their applications by enabling their apps to hook into the system search mechanism. This post (and subsequent ones) will walk though how to enable this in your application.

Window 8 has enabled developers to hook into various system 'Contracts' such as Search, Sharing and Settings. Contracts are like agreements between Windows and one or more Metro style apps, called contract participants, to support some kind of user interaction. There is a contract for each type of interaction, like playing music from an application to a connected stereo, and the contract specifies the types of capabilities the participant has.

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