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Windows Template Studio 2.0 Ships with Improved Visual Studio UI

Windows Template Studio, a Visual Studio extension that provides a low-code approach to creating Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps, yesterday launched in version 2.0.

Available in the Visual Studio Marketplace, Windows Template Studio uses a wizard-based approach to creating UWP apps, leveraging a variety of ready-to-go project templates. Developers can use the tool with C# or VB.NET programming languages.

Microsoft says resulting UWP projects contain well-formed, readable code using 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," Microsoft says.

Under the hood, Microsoft said, v2.0 has received a boost resulting from its developers working with the Visual Studio team.

"We've done a lot of work improving the user interface and being sure we're fully accessible for all developers," Microsoft's Clint Rutkas said in a post yesterday. "By partnering with the Visual Studio team, we feel the new interface is faster and more approachable. We've improved our template updating experience, our actual templates and much more. Our wizard also now detects dark, light and high contrast modes of Visual Studio."

Visual Studio developers who have already installed the extension should see it updated automatically. New users can download the VSIX installer.

Rutkas said the tool's navigation control will be switched out with the next update of Windows 10. That will be a new native control replacing the UWP Community Toolkit's Hamburger menu control.

Other improvements have focused on improving documentation, which company-wide is switching to the docs.microsoft.com platform.

"The docs that will stay on WTS's GitHub will be docs on modifying the engine or creating a template for the wizard to consume," Rutkas said.

The Windows Template Studio extension has been installed more than 401,000 times, earning an average 3.5 rating (scale to 5) from 42 reviewers.

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

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