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Windows Community Toolkit Previews WPF and WinForms .NET Core 3 Packages

The new Windows Community Toolkit 5.1 update builds on functionality previously introduced for using Universal Windows Platform (UWP) controls in Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) desktop applications.

Offered by the .NET Foundation, Windows Community Toolkit (formerly called the UWP Community Toolkit) is an open source project providing helper functions, custom controls and app services for .NET developers across different Windows 10 frameworks, including WPF, WinForms, Xamarin, .NET Core and others.

The Feb. 13 update includes a preview of WPF and WinForms packages supporting .NET Core, the new-age implementation of the traditional .NET Framework that takes an open, modular and cross-platform approach to .NET.

"With the recent release of .NET Core 3.0 preview 2, we’ve shipped a toolkit 6.0 preview package for our WPF/WinForms library Microsoft.Toolkit.Win32 to support it," said Michael A. Hawker, senior software engineer, in a blog post last week. It's now available for download (WPF) and WinForms) to try out in WPF or WinForms to give it a try in your .NET Core applications."

Other new features include:

  • Lottie-Windows Animation: "This new library provides high quality animation support on Windows 10 (1809) by utilizing the Windows.UI.Composition APIs and allows for the consumption of Bodymovin JSON files or optimized code-generated classes for playback in your Windows apps. It is the successor to the LottieUWP community project."
  • Remote Device Picker: "The Remote Device Picker allows a user to select a device, proximally or cloud accessible, from a dialog. The app can then use this information to perform various scenarios like opening and communicating with an app on the chosen device. Read more about what’s possible after selecting a device like opening an app or creating an app service.
  • Image Cropper: "The new Image Cropper control allows you to provide effortless image cropping functionality to your app. Perfect for user selected profile pictures and photo editing tools."

All of the above, along with improved accessibility functionality, a new OnDevice markup extension and more can be seen in the release notes.

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.

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