Book Image

Modernizing Your Windows Applications with the Windows App SDK and WinUI

By : Matteo Pagani, Marc Plogas
5 (1)
Book Image

Modernizing Your Windows Applications with the Windows App SDK and WinUI

5 (1)
By: Matteo Pagani, Marc Plogas

Overview of this book

If you're a developer looking to improve and modernize your existing LOB applications to leverage modern Windows features without having to rewrite the entire application from scratch, this book is for you. You’ll learn how to modernize your existing Windows Forms, WPF, and UWP applications and enrich them with the latest Windows features. Starting with sample LOB applications that cover common scenarios, you'll learn the differences between various components and then focus on design features for improved visual aspects like accessibility and responsive layouts. The book shows you how to enhance your existing applications using Windows App SDK components and various Windows APIs, resulting in deeper integration with the operating system. You’ll be taking a closer look at WinML, which enables Windows applications to evaluate machine learning models offline and leverage the power of your machine, or notifications, to engage with your users in a more effective way. You’ll also learn how to make your application deployment-ready by distributing it using various platforms like the Microsoft Store or websites. By the end of this Windows book, you'll be able to create a migration plan for your existing Windows applications and put your knowledge to work by enhancing your application with new features and integrating them with the Windows ecosystem.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: Basic Concepts
3
Section 2: Modernization Journey
9
Section 3: Integrating Your App with the Windows Ecosystem
14
Section 4: Distributing Your Application

Sending a notification from a Windows application

Notifications are another one of the features which are part of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) ecosystem and that, originally, wasn't available to the Win32 ecosystem. However, expanding this feature to the whole developer ecosystem very soon became a priority for Microsoft, since more and more apps wanted to participate in the notification ecosystem to take advantage of all the new features and to provide a more streamlined experience. When you participate in the native ecosystem, rather than building your own custom notification solution, you get advantages like the following:

  • A familiar look and feel for the user, which follows the Windows UX guidelines
  • Integration with features such as Focus Assist, which automatically hides all the notifications when your screen is mirrored or when you're sharing your screen with other users through applications such as Microsoft Teams
  • Integration with the Action...