Keeping up there history of releasing updating SDK’s with each Windows 10 build, Microsoft released and detailed a new SDK update to go along with Windows 10 version 1511 update. This update provides enhancements to allow developers to create their apps.
Microsoft posted a detailed blog posting veering the specifics of the improvements in this SDK update. A few of them include:
- UI.Composition, a new API family that directly targets the UI foundation layer
- SQLite data access library now ships with the Universal Windows Platform
- Improvements in ink and keyboard
- More flexibility to app installation on devices
- Includes several updated APIs for beautiful UI including jump lists and XAML updates
- Improvements for bluetooth and networking
- Devices.Perception namespace contains the client APIs that allow a UWP application to access the color, depth, or infrared data of computer vision cameras
- Additional flexibility for storing files and associating them to specific users
If you are curious in the specifics of these updates, check out Clint Rutkas’s blog post that covers it all.
Silverlight Bridge
In addition, along with this release, they announced the general availability of the Silverlight bridge. This bridge allows a developer to accelerate bringing over their Windows Phone 8.1 app to the Universal Windows Platform. This free Visual Studio add-in analyzes source code, automatically converting code to use UWP APIs. Right now, the bridge has 2300 mappings and additional helpers to help with the migration. If you are interested in it, it can be downloaded here.
Virtual Machines
Also along with this release Microsoft has announced 60-day evaluation developer virtual machines for anyone interested in developing for Windows 10 to use. They will be released in multiple formats: Hyper-V, Parallels, VirtualBox, and VMWare. If you have been interested in trying out one of the new Bridges or just looking to play with some development, go check them out.