Introduction
The (UWP) can actually run on all types of Windows-based devices. It was a huge challenge for the developers to introduce the UWP with Windows 10.
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Image source - Microsoft
This is the detailed figure, which describes the Universal Windows Platform itself. Fortunately, the UWP has universal building blocks and built-in features for your help.
User Interface
UWP actually makes the UI with the help of a Scaling Algorithm. Image Scaling is the process of resizing the image, which is done automatically. UWP works with the help of effective pixels and not with physical pixels. Actually, we ignore the screen resolution and pixels density. Hence, it is easy to resize the user interface.
There are three UI Frameworks in .NET.
All these languages can be used to design the Universal Windows app.
Development with UWP
There are some programming languages, which are useful to start with in UWP.
- C++/CX
- C#, VB
- JavaScript
- Wiring
- Node.js
- Python
If you are targeting the raw/garbage graphics or multi-threaded work, then C++/DirectX is a better option for development
If your goal is to make a more portable app than the other platforms, then HTML/Javascript is a good option for development.
If you have learned Java, Objective-C like platforms, then C#/XAML is better for you.
Xaml is the cross platform language. Actually, the power of XAML is that it is the markup language.
Windows 10
Universal Windows Platform is released with Windows 10 + Visual Studio 2015. Windows 10 was released on 29th July 2015.
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Image source - Microsoft
This is the great achievement of the experts, that they introduced an Operating System which can execute on all the devices and its app quality features are responsive, which is great progress. In a very short period of time -- just about 8 months -- the computers and other IoT devices follow Windows 10. There is great performance due to Universal Windows Platform.
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Image source - Microsoft
One Dev Store
With Windows 7, 8, 8.1 the devices had their own specific app stores. It meant the desktop computers, phones and other devices had their own different stores. Windows 10 supports one single dev app store, which is useful for all Windows 10 devices. This is actually called Responsiveness and Adaptive UI apps, which have nothing to do with what kind of device you use.
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Image source - Microsoft
How to create Adaptive UI
Visual Studio 2015 supported UWP and there are different new controls in XAML, which are used to design the universal apps.
These controls are listed below:
- Relative Panel
- Split View
- Visual State Manager
Relative Panel describes the relation with the other controls and sets its position on the panel with the help of this relation with other controls.
Split View is actually used to create Hamburger Navigation in the apps and it is a very good feature in XAML.
Visual State Manager control is used to set the UI for specific sizes of devices. We use this control to set the UI for the different devices and then we check it.
For tooling purposes, there is also a tool available in VS 2015 to check the app on the different sized platforms.
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Important Information
UWP is a pre-compiled platform. It is not compiled by CLR in the .NET Framework.