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

Chapter 3: The Windows App SDK for a WPF Developer

In the previous chapter, we introduced a wide range of topics – from XAML basics to binding to user controls. It was one of the biggest chapters of the book, since WinUI is significantly different from Windows Forms when it comes to building the user interface (UI).

WinUI, on the other hand, has a familiar feeling for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) developers, since it shares many similarities. The most important one, without any doubt, is the UI layer – both technologies are based on XAML. This means that you'll be able to reuse all your existing knowledge when you modernize the UI of your applications.

However, what's the point of a new technology if it doesn't introduce anything new? In this chapter, we're going to learn the main differences between WPF and WinUI so that you can plan accordingly the migration phase of your application.

We'll cover the following topics:

    ...