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

Summary

UWP introduced many concepts that are still truly relevant today—delivering a modern UI experience, optimized for multiple screens and accessibility; being respectful of the system resources; supporting new technologies, such as modern authentication and artificial intelligence. These are just a few examples of features introduced by UWP that are important to build modern desktop applications.

This is the reason the Windows App SDK and WinUI were built around the same principles, but on top of the Win32 ecosystem to give developers more flexibility and make it easier for them to reuse the existing code and libraries.

Even if many of the building blocks are the same, moving to the Win32 ecosystem means that there are some differences around some key concepts, such as the application's life cycle or windowing management. In this chapter, we learned about these differences in detail as well as what the new APIs you must use to properly support these scenarios...