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

Working with toast notifications

Regardless of the platform and the deployment model of your choice, the first step is to install the Windows Community Toolkit package dedicated to notifications. Right-click on your project, choose Manage NuGet packages, and look for the package with CommunityToolkit.WinUI.Notifications as an identifier.

Note

Despite the package name containing the WinUI keyword, it isn't specific only for this platform, and can work also with WPF, Windows Forms, or UWP.

The other requirement is to use a dedicated TargetFramework for Windows 10 or 11 since the toolkit needs to consume some APIs from the Universal Windows Platform. In our scenario, we're building a WinUI application, so we're good to go. If you're using Windows Forms or WPF, instead, make sure to set the TargetFramework at least as follows:

<TargetFramework>net6.0-windows10.0.19041.0
  </TargetFramework>

In the case of a WinUI project, there&apos...