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

A brief introduction to ONNX and WinML

To solve the challenges we have outlined in the introduction of this chapter, the ecosystem has introduced the concept of Edge computing. Instead of delegating every operation to the cloud, machine learning models are evaluated directly on a local device, without needing an internet connection. The cloud still plays a critical role, but as a companion; for example, if the recognition rate of an anomaly is under a certain threshold, the application might choose to send the video feed to a cloud service for deeper analysis.

Windows 10 has introduced a platform called WinML to enable any Windows device to become part of the Edge ecosystem. Thanks to this feature, you can evaluate machine learning models directly on your device, using the computing power offered by the CPU and GPU of your machine. WinML exposes a set of APIs that you can integrate into your Windows applications so that you can evaluate a model in your application and process the...