HomeWinBuzzer NewsMicrosoft Releases Open-Source UWP Community Toolkit for Easy App Development

Microsoft Releases Open-Source UWP Community Toolkit for Easy App Development

The new toolkit aims to make it easier for developers to build UWP apps through a variety of built-in functions. Control, notification, service, code, and animation helpers are all included.

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has been encouraging developers to move to UWP for a while, with limited success. The company recently released a new SDK for Windows 10 and will bring their UWP Dev Center to Xbox. The latest scheme is slightly different, however, and could have more weight behind it.

The UWP Community Toolkit is an entirely open-source project that lets the developer community collaborate to introduce new capabilities on top the SDK. The project has three primary goals.

UWP Community Toolkit Goals

Giorgio Sardo is a Senior Director at Microsoft, and took to the blog to explain some of his hopes for the service:

1. Simplified app development: The toolkit includes new capabilities (helper functions, custom controls and app services) that simplify or demonstrate common developer tasks. Where possible, our goal is to allow app developers to get started with just one line of code.
2. Open-Source: The toolkit (source code, issues and roadmap) will be developed as an open-source project. We welcome contributions from the .NET developer community.
3. Alignment with SDK: The feedback from the community on this project will be reflected in future versions of the Windows SDK for .”

You can use the toolkit with any new or existing UWP app, as long as it was written in C# or VB.NET. It's only compatible with Windows 10 SDK Build 10586 and above, but this could change in the future.

Of course, the toolkit supports any device that is running Windows 10, including Mobile, Xbox and HoloLens. Desktop apps that used the bridge also work.

Current Features

Here are the toolkit's current features:

  • Controls: Adaptive grid view, pull to refresh list view, hamburger menu, range selector, Image ex, headered text block, radial gauge, swipe enabled list item, rotator tile.
  • Notifications: Live tile, toast.
  • Animation helpers: Fade animation, scale animation, offset animation, rotate animation, blur animation.
  • Service helpers: Bing, Facebook, Twitter.
  • Code helpers: Color, connection, storage file, stream.

Capabilities will only extend as more developers contribute, and you can join in yourself on GitHub. You can also begin by following the Dev Center documentation.

SourceMicrosoft
Ryan Maskell
Ryan Maskellhttps://ryanmaskell.co.uk
Ryan has had a passion for gaming and technology since early childhood. Fusing the skills from his Creative Writing and Publishing degree with profound technical knowledge, he enjoys covering news about Microsoft. As an avid writer, he is also working on his debut novel.

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