With the new releases of the .NET platform and Visual studio, I was bit afraid being a WPF and XAML programmer as there was nothing new happening in windows side. But with the release of Windows 10 and introduction of UWP there will be great scope for XAML developers in the coming time. Lets get introduced to the UWP world in this small introductory write up.
UWP – Universal Windows platform
- UWP provides a huge set of API for huge range of devices like Devices + IoT, Mobile, PC, XBox, Surface Hub, Hololens, collaborative devices like surface hub for conference rooms
- In the future any device using Microsoft will be programmable using UWP.
- MS is planning to target 1 billion devices by next 2 yrs.
- And they will be using the Apps created from same platform which is UWP.
- There is probably no other platform on the earth which will be serving such huge number of devices.
- UWP apps can be created with XAML
- We can say a very bright future for XAML and its developers.
Windows 10 For Developers
- WinRT was released with Windows 8.
- Windows 8 contains a special version of WinRT known as WinPRT which is known as windows phone run time
- In 2013 Microsoft released Windows 8.1 which helped to use the same app on Phones as well as the desktops
- In 2015 Windows 10 is released. MS is planning to spread windows 10 everywhere right from small Iot devices or smart watches to big devices like Xbox and Hololens.
- All these devices will use the same same kernel as well as the same OS i.e. Windows 10
- Same store to acquire games and Apps
- MS will keep the installations up to date which means we can use the APIs as soon as they are released
C# and XAML with UWP structure
- As seen in the figure above, Windows 10 support 2 different ways to create applications. Legacy way is to create using C++ and MFC and directly access windows surface or directly use DirectX to create games . These applications cannot be installed from any store
- The new way of creating the applications is using the UWP. UWP iself gives a lots of ways to create applications
- Applications in the Universal Windows platform can be created using javascript and HTML. We can also create using C++. And last but not the least using C# and XAML.
- Applications build on some other platform can be used in Universal Windows platform using the bridging technologies.
- If we have some web application running some where we can directly bring it into the windows store using the windows bridge for hosted web apps. For this we have to upload all the configuration files to the windows store that point to the existing web application. The application will keep running in the web server but the Javascript will have access to all the UWP API sets including cortana, notifications and live tiles.
- UWP have windows bridge for classical windows applications. This bridge allows to bring the win 32 apps to modern windows store. These applications will only run on PC but we will get new way to monetize and popularize these applications.
Conslusion:
Windows 10 with UWP has lots to offer. There is not need for WPF and XAML developers to get disheartened. As seen in this post Microsoft has great plans in store for us.
In my coming article I will show how we can develop apps on Universal Windows platform using C# and XAML.