Low-Code Windows Template Studio 3.0 Ships -- Visual Studio Magazine

Low-Code Windows Template Studio 3.0 Ships

By David Ramel
01/31/2019

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 at Converge 360.

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