To get the most out of this book

You will need to install Visual Studio 2019 version 16.9 or later (https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/) with the following workloads and the latest WinUI 3.0 NuGet package (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Microsoft-WinUI.WinUIProjectTemplates):

• Universal Windows Platform Development
• .NET Desktop Development (includes .NET 5)

The code and instructions should also work with newer versions of the recommended software. The latest WinUI 3.0 pre-requisites are available on Microsoft Docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/winui3/#install-winui-3-preview-4.

Note

As WinUI 3 and Project Reunion are in active development in 2021, it is possible that the names of some projects, packages, and libraries referenced in the book may change in future releases. XAML Islands will not be available and UWP clients will not be fully supported initially. For a full list of what is planned for the first stable release of WinUI 3.0, you can reference the team's roadmap on GitHub: https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/blob/master/docs/roadmap.md#winui-30-feature-roadmap

For the chapter on Blazor web development, it is recommended to download Visual Studio Code (https://code.visualstudio.com/). If you have not already installed the .NET Desktop Development workload for Visual Studio, the .NET 5 SDK will also be needed for Blazor development (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/5.0).

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code via the GitHub repository (link available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

For additional background on Windows development concepts, you can explore the Develop Windows 10 applications Learning Path on Microsoft Learn (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/develop-windows10-apps/).