Microsoft has rolled out the latest version of Windows Community Toolkit, bringing the developer-focused open source service to version 5.1. Included in this release are a few interesting new features. Among them is easier ways to integrate Project Rome, Microsoft’s cross-platform PC/smartphone linking API.
Microsoft introduced three new features. The first is the Remote Device Picker, which gives developers the ability to choose a device on cloud or on-premises from a dialogue. With this information, the application can perform tasks such as communicating with the app through a device.
By leveraging Project Rome, Windows Community Toolkit can now do the following:
“For example, having your app or website (using MS Graph APIs) continue a task to another device or create companion experiences that can communicate with each other across devices, like a remote control.”
Elsewhere, Windows Community Toolkit has gained an Image Cropper tool. This gives developers a tool for functional and easy image cropping within an app.
Animations with Lottie-Windows
Microsoft has also rolled out high-quality animation support through Lottie-Windows. This library gives animation support for Windows 10 versions 1809 (October 2018 Update) and above. Leveraging Windows.UI.Composition APIs to provide Bodymotion JSON files for playback in Windows applications.
Finally, Accessibility improvements have been made to Windows Community Toolkit:
“We’ve been striving to increase the accessibility of our controls in the last release and this one. This update provides more fixes to keyboard navigation, high contrast, and narrator readability to the toolkit controls.”
