Book Image

Learn WinUI 3 - Second Edition

By : Alvin Ashcraft
5 (2)
Book Image

Learn WinUI 3 - Second Edition

5 (2)
By: Alvin Ashcraft

Overview of this book

WinUI 3 takes a whole new approach to delivering Windows UI components and controls and has the ability to deliver the same features across multiple versions of Windows. Learn WinUI 3 is a comprehensive introduction to WinUI and Windows apps for anyone who is new to WinUI and XAML applications. This updated second edition begins by helping you get to grips with the latest features in WinUI and shows you how XAML is used in UI development. The next set of chapters will help you set up a new Visual Studio environment, develop a new desktop project, incorporate the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern in a WinUI project, and develop unit tests for ViewModel commands. Next, you’ll cover the basics of data access from WinUI projects with a step-by-step approach. As you advance, you’ll discover how to leverage the Fluent Design System to design beautiful WinUI applications. You’ll also explore the contents and capabilities of the Windows Community Toolkit and learn how to create cross-platform apps with markup and code from your project using Uno Platform. The concluding chapters will teach you how to build, debug, and deploy apps to the Microsoft Store. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to build WinUI applications from scratch and how to modernize existing desktop apps using WinUI 3 and the Windows App SDK.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1:Introduction to WinUI and Windows Applications
8
Part 2:Extending WinUI and Modernizing Applications
13
Part 3:Build and Deploy on Windows and Beyond

Before UWP – Windows 8 XAML applications

Before UWP applications were launched with Windows 10 in 2015, there were XAML applications for Windows 8 and 8.1. The XAML syntax and many of the application programming interfaces (APIs) were the same, and they were Microsoft’s next step to achieve universal app development across desktop, mobile, and other platforms (Xbox, mixed reality, and so on). A XAML app could be written for Windows 8 and Windows Phone. These projects would generate separate sets of binaries that could be installed on a PC or a Windows Phone.

These apps had many other limitations that modern UWP apps do not. For instance, they only ran full-screen, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 1.1 – Windows 8 full-screen app (sourced from Stack Overflow; reproduced under CC BY-SA 4.0 – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

Figure 1.1 – Windows 8 full-screen app (sourced from Stack Overflow; reproduced under CC BY-SA 4.0 – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

Many other early restrictions on Windows 8 apps have been lessened or completely...