News
Low-Code Windows Template Studio 3.0 Ships
Microsoft shipped Windows Template Studio 3.0, a milestone update of the open source, wizard-driven Visual Studio 2017 extension for coding Universal Windows Platform (UWP) applications.
Available in the Visual Studio Marketplace, Windows Template Studio has been downloaded more than 720,000 times by developers favoring the low-code approach to create UWP projects that are well-formed and feature readable code incorporating the latest Windows 10 features while following proven patterns and best practices.
With Windows Template Studio, that approach involves selecting: a prebuilt UWP project type (navigation pane, pivot and tabs, and so on); design pattern; a prebuilt page of different types (Master/Detail, Web View, and so on); and additional features before building and running the project with a click.
The dev team's Clint Rutkas announced the 3.0 release today (Jan. 31) in a blog post, in which he listed the following "what's new" items:
- Code now generates as a multi-project solution. This will enable better reuse and separation of code logic. This now will output a UWP project and .NET Core project.
- Support adding new projects on right-click
- Horizontal Navigation View is replaced the Pivot navigation pattern
- Update MVVMLight to use .NET Standard library
- Bug fixes
Going forward, future builds will include:
- Menubar navigation pattern template (ETA is v3.1)
- Identity Login (ETA is v3.1)
- Improved Visual Studio 2019 support
- Azure features starting to be added in (v3.1 and beyond)
- Unit Test projects
"With partnership with the community, we've continue cranking out and iterating new features and functionality," Rutkas concluded. "We're always looking for additional people to help out and if you're interested, please head to our GitHub at https://aka.ms/wts. If you have an idea or feature request, please make the request!
All of the changes in the new release are detailed in the project's GitHub site changelog.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.