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Developers Can Dive into Windows 10 Creators Update
The Windows Developer group opened up the Windows 10 Creators Update and its SDK today, and that gives developers the opportunity to officially start tapping into its gaming and AI capabilities.
- By Michael Domingo
- 04/07/2017
The Windows Developer group opened up Windows 10 Creators Update and its SDK today, and that gives developers the opportunity to officially start tapping into its gaming and AI capabilities. Windows 10 Creators Update will be officially released on April 11.
Windows 10 Creators Update will get lots of exposure at this year's Microsoft Build Conference, according to a blog Kevin Gallo, Corporate Vice President of the Windows Developer group: "We'll be taking a close look at all of these (and a lot more) at Microsoft Build 2017, including some of the things we've got planned for the future."
Gallo touts improvements to W10CU's ink technology (writing analysis/recognition) and effects, improved Surface Dial APIs, the addition of an Xbox Live Creators Program for game devs who want to publish Xbox Live content, and Windows Mixed Reality functionality, and improvements to Desktop Bridge (for migrating legacy Win32 apps to the latest Windows OS).
Specifically for developers, W10CU allows Visual Studio developers to run differing SDK versions side by side on a single development machine. That capability has actually been available since the release of the Visual Studio 2017 Update Preview. The VS 2017 Update, covered in this blog by Visual Studio Program Manager Daniel Jacobsen while released as a preview, is aimed specifically to prepare developers for the Creators Update, and is peppered with W10CU-enabled support and tools.
Alongside the side-by-side installation, other highlights among its features: UWP tool updated to support Creators Update SDK; ability to stream install of UWP packages; enhanced Nuget package management via addition of a PackageReference node; addition of a Python workload; ability to configure Command Line Arguments from Debug config page; and XAML Designer and Editor improvements.
Visual Studio 2017 Update became generally available earlier this week, as did a version of the .NET Framework that also mostly supports W10CU (for more on its limited capabilities and plans for future feature support, go here).
On a related note, the group also released an update to the UWP Community Toolkit with mainly improvements, but there are some new controls as well.
One of the main improvements is the conformity of all controls to be able to work using a keyboard, mouse, and touch input, as well as Narrator capabilities. The 1.4 update also contains a new project that provides developer support via two controls in this version: a FocusTracker control displays data on the control that's got focus, and a AlignmentGrid control will display a grid for laying out controls. A blog on the 1.4 update also highlights a number of new features: Carousel (list of items, with selected item in the middle), ViewExtensions, NetworkHelper, and Twitter streaming API support, are only a few of them. A full list and more info is in a release note here.
About the Author
Michael Domingo is a long-time software publishing veteran, having started up and managed several developer publications for the Clipper compiler, Microsoft Access, and Visual Basic. He's also managed IT pubs for 1105 Media, including Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine and Virtualization Review before landing his current gig as Visual Studio Magazine Editor in Chief. Besides his publishing life, he's a professional photographer, whose work can be found by Googling domingophoto.