For years, Microsoft has been trying to get developers to build Windows apps using its newer Universal Windows Platform (UWP) rather than the old-school Win32. At the online-only Build 2020 conference, the company unveiled Project Reunion, which is intended to wed the two.
The older style still dominates the Windows applications landscape, but UWP apps (as their name indicates) can easily be adapted to run on not only Windows computers, but also on Xbox consoles, the web, and even the HoloLens. The downside is that they don't run on the discontinued Windows 7 OS, which lacks an app store.
Project Reunion can also endow UWP apps with is support for newer input options like touch and pen, in addition to mouse and keyboard. It lets coders add swipe gestures that work not only on a Windows 10 touch screen but also on an iPad.
A lot of this cross-platform support comes from one of Project Reunion's main components: WinUI 3, a UI framework that uses Fluent-design controls and styles. Its predecessor was only available for UWP apps, but the new version supports Win32 code as well. According to Microsoft, "WinUI 3 decouples the XAML, Composition, and Input layers of Windows 10." In his Build demo, Kevin Gallo, head of developer platform at Microsoft, also showed a nifty input box trick, in which you can use math operators and the app does the math for you. So, if the form entry is for square footage, you can just enter 12x21 and have the app calculate it.
Creating a modern UWP app with Project Reunion (Image: Microsoft)
At Build 2017, I reported on tools the company had produced that make it easy to convert Win32 apps to UWP apps. Reunion extends and expands on this initiative, adding Microsoft 365 Graph and WebView components as well as the compartmentalization of apps through things like NuGet, a shared repository for .NET packages. Another current component of Project Reunion is MSIX, a modern app packaging tool.
WebView2 is now in preview, with the first stable release "rapidly approaching," Gallo says. Not only does WebView2 let you access and display web content in your app, but also PDFs. As with WinUI 3, WebView2 is decoupled from Windows, meaning it doesn’t require a particular Windows version. As you might expect, WebView2 is powered by the new Edge browser build on Chromium code.
Microsoft's Kevin Gallo shows new coding tools at Build 2020 (Image: Microsoft)
The last current component of Project Reunion is Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD). According to Gallo, "WVD empowers remote work and education solutions for your Windows apps on iOS, Mac, Android, Linux, and of course, Windows." It adapts WinUI programs to present a native look on those devices and can take advantage of the tablet's cameras and mic as well. WVD also benefits from Azure's scalability, letting you add lots of users, while MSIX will enable simplified deployment to these non-Windows platforms as well as to Windows 10.
Interested developers can check out the various pieces of Project Reunion code for themselves at its GitHub repository.
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