Taking Universal Apps to Windows 10 - Visual Studio Tools for Windows 10 Technical Preview

Universal Apps are all the rage right now, that’s why we decided to dedicate another issue of the newsletter editorial to them!

We have just recently announced the Visual Studio 2015 Tools for Windows 10 Preview. These tools enable you to build Windows universal apps that run across all Windows 10 devices from Windows Phone to Xbox and Windows Store. In addition, you can also use these tools to build desktop Win32 applications that leverage Windows 10 APIs.

The new Windows 10 universal apps are created using new project templates in Visual Studio 2015 using the language of your choice: C#, VB, JavaScript or C++. You still have the option to have multiple projects in your solution that you can tailor for functionality and form factor for the various devices running Windows 10 while maximizing code sharing across those projects using shared projects.

Windows 10 universal apps can be deployed to Windows 10 Preview PCs and tablets running the latest builds. If you want to test a universal Windows 10 Phone app, you will need to use the emulators provided in this version of the tools.

Reference an Extension SDK that supplies either Windows or Windows Mobile specific APIs to tailor your app to light up additional device-specific capabilities using adaptive code patterns.

On Visual Studio 2015 Tools for Windows 10 you can now leverage the new Windows 10 APIs in your Win32 applications. Windows 10 also comes preinstalled with .NET Framework 4.6, which includes many new features including improvements in WPF and Windows Forms.

But all existing Windows Desktop applications (WPF, Windows Forms, Win32) continue to work on Windows 10 without any changes.

This release of Visual Studio integrates Application Insights with Windows 10 applications by default so that you can get telemetry for your applications easily via the Microsoft Azure portal. More on Application Insights in your Windows applications can be found here.

Become a Windows Insider today to download Windows 10 and the developer tools and use them with Visual Studio 2015 CTP 6 to start building Windows 10 universal apps!

To learn everything about Windows 10 from a developer’s perspective, follow the Build conference, April 29 through May 1 in San Francisco. For everyone who doesn’t plan to travel to the conference, Microsoft Switzerland will be hosting live streaming events of the keynote on the evening of April 29 together with our experts in a relaxed atmosphere with snacks and drinks in Wallisellen and Lausanne.

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 07, 2015
  No matching templates for F# I see. Can you please stop treating your best language like a second-class one?