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What UWP Deprecation? Group Celebrates Progressive Apps in Launch 2021 Contest
For all of the discuss of the deprecation of Microsoft’s Common Home windows Platform (UWP), it nonetheless thrives in locations, together with the UWP Group, which simply introduced the winners of its Launch 2021 occasion that celebrates UWP apps and their growth.
Particularly, Launch 2021 is “the place customers, builders, beta testers and translators work collectively to carry their concepts to life, and Launch their initiatives as a group.”
The occasion showcases apps created by builders utilizing the UWP Group Discord server, who’ve their very own UWP Community web page that serves as “The homepage for the unofficial Discord server” and is used to showcase the Launch 2021 choices.
So far as that UWP deprecation talk, that has been occurring for years, with one pundit claiming “UWP is dead” in 2019.
The Discord group apparently did not get the memo. It confirmed 3,978 members on the time of this writing, with 683 on-line mid-day on a Thursday. So life stays.
As a reminder, UWP is described by Microsoft as a method to create consumer purposes for Home windows, utilizing WinRT APIs to offer UI and asynchronous options for internet-connected and different units that run on Home windows 10, together with PCs, tablets, smartphones, Xbox One, Microsoft HoloLens and Web of Issues {hardware}.
In Launch 2021 — the third annual occasion — greater than 20 new UWP initiatives had been launched yesterday (Sept. 1), judged by a panel of judges who awarded prizes to winners after gauging:
- Flexibility: A Fluent Design precept. Responsive layouts, adaptive enter strategies and a pure UI match on each system.
- Empathy: A Fluent Design precept. The consumer expertise is steady, intuitive and pleasant to make use of.
- Magnificence: A Fluent Design precept. The app is participating and immersive. Shadows, animations, depth, normal design.
- Potential: Apps are constructed on an ideal thought and have the potential to develop into one thing even greater.
- Originality: Apps that do one thing very authentic, distinctive or unusual, or serves an unfilled area of interest.
- Accessibility: Display screen reader help, localization, excessive distinction themes and keyboard navigation make your app extra accessible to customers across the phrase.
Here is a screenshot of a number of the initiatives, sorted by class rating:
To offer extra of an thought on what forms of apps are standard within the contest, the descriptions of the highest row of initiatives learn:
- Exd Pic: a system for making interactive photos. It has probably the most superior tracing capabilities of merchandise of this varieties
- Yöti: multiplatform music recognizer fueled by the group in such a means that even beginning artists can present songs in order that they are often acknowledged immediately.
- Geus.io: a recreation the place you attempt to guess what different gamers are drawing and whoever ends all of the rounds with extra factors wins!
- Clipboard Canvas: A productiveness instrument for pasting and previewing a number of file varieties with help of digital Reference Information.
Different initiatives embrace a PDF editor, an ambient white noise app, a Fluent Display screen Recorder and extra. All apps are described as new or vNext and are free for anybody to make use of.
Some initiatives are hosted on GitHub, together with Clipboard Canvas, so you’ll be able to take a look at their supply code recordsdata.
Launch showcases for 2019 and 2020 can be found here.
As for the way forward for UWP, it is nonetheless alive for now, being built-in into unification efforts like Undertaking Reunion and WinUI 3.
Nonetheless, many trade pundits and observers are nonetheless claiming Microsoft has stopped investing in UWP or no less than lessened such investments with actions comparable to shutting down its Microsoft Advert Monetization platform for UWP apps final 12 months (“Microsoft shovels more dirt on UWP apps, leaving Win32 apps as the future once again“) and saying it has no plans to launch WinUI 3 for UWP in a steady means (“Oh dear, Universal Windows Platform: Microsoft says ‘no plans to release WinUI 3 for UWP in a stable way’“) in July.
Microsoft has offered little steerage on the way forward for UWP currently, although, presumably leaving a few of its devoted followers to marvel if they are going to be “Silverlighted.”