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Windows Template Studio for UWP Apps Updated
Microsoft is continuing to improve its new Windows Template Studio, a wizard-based extension for Visual Studio designed to speed up the development of Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps.
The open source tool was introduced in May as a successor to the company's Windows App Studio and received a version 1.1 update in June.
"Windows Template Studio is a Visual Studio 2017 Extension that accelerates the creation of new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps using a wizard-based experience," the GitHub site says. "The resulting UWP project is well-formed, readable code that incorporates the latest Windows 10 features while implementing proven patterns and best practices. Sprinkled throughout the generated code we have links Docs, Stack Overflow and blogs to provide useful insights."
As promised in the product's roadmap, a new version 1.2 update was announced last month.
While the update shows Microsoft is following the tool's improvement path, it includes no major new features. In fact, as product manager Clint Rutkas announced with a smiley face emoticon: "In this release, our major new feature is adding content into an existing application with Right-click add. We've grown up past only File->New."
A dozen other updates were also announced, including improvements to the wizard, minor feature updates and enhancements to templates and processes.
Upcoming features planned for future builds include:
- Fluent design in the templates
- Project Rome features as options for projects
- Ink templates
- Improved Right-click->add support for existing projects
- Localization in the wizard
- Full accessibility supported in both wizard and in the templates
- Visual Basic support
If developers have added the Windows Template Studio extension to Visual Studio, it should have updated automatically, though Rutkas explained how to trigger a manual update if needed. If it hasn't been installed, developers can grab it here.
Rutkas invited more community contributions and solicited ideas and feature requests, which can be logged here. The GitHub project reports 21 contributors, with 614 stars.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.