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

Handling signing

So far, we have succeeded in creating an MSIX package, but we still can't use it. In Chapter 11, Publishing Your Application, we learned that an MSIX package should be as follows:

  • It must be signed with a certificate.
  • The certificate must be trusted by the machine.
  • The Publisher defined in the manifest must match the subject of the certificate.

As such, we can't really use the package created by our CD pipeline since it isn't signed. If we try to install it, Windows will show the following error:

Figure 12.6 – The error displayed by Windows when we try to install an unsigned MSIX package

To solve this problem, we must sign the package as part of our workflow. Signing is a very delicate task as we must find a way to sign the package without exposing our certificate. If we don't protect it, a malicious developer could steal it and use it to sign other applications using our identity.

Visual...