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

Managing the application's window

UWP introduced a different model to manage the application's window, compared to the more traditional one offered by the Win32 ecosystem. Since UWP was created with the goal to support multiple devices, the default experience was based on single-window applications. In this context, UWP used the ApplicationView and CoreWindow classes to host the content of a window. Thanks to these APIs, you were able to perform common tasks related to windows, such as customizing the content and changing the size.

Then, later, when Microsoft started to invest more in the desktop side of the UWP, it introduced support to multiple windows, intending to improve the multitasking story. To better support this scenario, Microsoft introduced a new class called AppWindow, which combined the UI thread and the window used by the application to display its content.

In Windows App SDK applications, the windowing experience has some significant differences, since...