This porting guide explains the differences between your current app's technology and the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). Once the path between technologies is understood, you'll be able to dive into the rest of the Developer Center, which is a comprehensive resource for developing UWP apps. A good way to do that, when you're ready, is to start with How to develop a Store app.
It is recommended to develop hosted web apps of your websites only. If you are not the owner of the site, then you do not have any right to convert that web application to a Universal Windows Platform app.
Convert your Web Application into UWP App
Open package.appmanifest file. Here, you can see that index.html is listed as start page of the application. You will use your own website link here.Figure 7 - Package.AppManifest page
Many developers and companies create Web interfaces for their products and services for easy discoverability and access. Another platform is the apps platform. Native apps provide richer UX and functionality than Web apps. Now, Project Westminster provides developers a way to convert modern Web sites into native apps.
Additionally, there are many deeper integrations that can be achieved through the JavaScript Windows object and help light up the app functionality through richer experiences. Contacts, Camera, Microphone, Toast notifications and many features open a window of opportunity for blending your Web site with the app persona. The code in this article has been converted into a project template and made available for developers through GitHub at bit.ly/2k5FlJh.
For the fourth installment in the series, we are open sourcing yet another sample app: South Ridge Video, an open source video app developed as a hosted web application built with React.js and hosted on a web server. South Ridge can easily be converted to a UWP application that takes advantage of native platform capabilities and can be distributed through the Windows Store as any other UWP app. The source code is available on GitHub right now, so make sure to check it out.
What if you could extend the investment put into your web application and make it available as an Xbox One Windows Store app? What if you could also continue to use your existing web frameworks, CDN and server backend, yet still be able to use native Windows 10 APIs?
First, you need to put your retail Xbox One into developer mode so you can deploy and test the app. This is pretty straightforward; it involves installing an app from the Windows Store. Go here to see the steps on how to activate dev mode and how it works.
The Windows team would love to hear your feedback. Please keep the feedback coming using our Windows Developer UserVoice site. If you have a direct bug, please use the Windows Feedback tool built directly into Windows 10.
For existing web applications, Windows 10 makes it easy for you to create a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app that packages your website for publishing to the Store.You could make your app a hosted web app with just a website URL following Convert your web application to a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app.
The Desktop Bridge brings a number of important improvements to the Windows platform for all developers. First, you can convert existing Windows desktop apps or games to .appx packages, so your users will be able to install them easily and experience seamless updates, be it through the Windows Store or any distribution channel of your choice.
Once you have successfully converted your desktop app (either with the Desktop App Converter or manually), you are ready to deploy, test and enhance your app. Now that your app is in the UWP app model and has an .appx package, the methods for doing this are the same as for any UWP app. Check out our Deploy and Debug documentation for detailed steps on side-loading and debugging. Note that your converted app may need some code changes in some cases. Be sure to read the Preparing Your Desktop App for Conversion to UWP topic on the Windows Dev Center.
You can now iterate on your code and start enhancing your app with exciting new UWP features that were previously not available to desktop apps. Add background tasks and app services. Add a UWP process to your package to host a UWP XAML UI frontend, and so much more. We will continue to update the Desktop Bridge sample repo on GitHub to demonstrate many of these great UWP features consumed by converted desktop applications, as we are getting closer to the final release of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.
You might wonder why anyone would want to convert a desktop application to a new UWP app. For one thing, only UWP apps are allowed in the Windows Store. This allows developers to get a lot more eyes on their apps, not to mention single-click installation, easy purchasing, and automatic updates.
You can normally only install an .appx package if it has a valid signature. Microsoft recommends using the signtool.exe application included with the Windows 10 SDK to create a self-signed certificate, which will allow you to install and test the application on your own computer.
It's all part of an initiative called Project Centennial, which now you know as Desktop Bridge. The new approach is essentially a "bridge" that let developers take traditional desktop applications and convert them into Universal Windows Platform (modern) apps.
The idea behind Desktop Bridge is that great apps take time and effort, and if they're already working, Microsoft doesn't want you to abandon that code. With Desktop Bridge, you can take your existing desktop application (Win32, WPF, and Windows Forms), make a little modification (if necessary), and bring that great code to the new platform, which can also take advantage of many new features.
The conversion is done using the DesktopAppConverter, which is a tool to automate the process (or at least most of it) to bring your desktop application built using .NET 4.6.1 or Win32 technologies to the new Universal Windows Platform (UWP). In addition, you can also publish the app in the Windows Store to reach millions of new customers, which is one of the reasons Microsoft wants you to convert your app.
It's important to note that you can only run the DesktopAppConverter on Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise. You can only convert applications with installers, and not portable apps. And you can only deploy converted apps to 64-bit machines.
Congratulations! You made it this far, and now it's the time to have fun. After setting up the converter, you can proceed to convert your traditional desktop app into a Universal Windows Platform app.
For this guide, I chose to convert the popular Notepad++ desktop app, which you can always download and use from the official site. Of course, you can always try to use your own application or another installer.
At this point, PowerShell should install the converted modern app on your computer. You can then launch the app like with any other app from the Start menu -- it'll even show up in the Recently Added list.
It's worth pointing out that after converting and installing, the app will run on your computer like any other app. However, for developers at least, this is just the beginning. If you want to take advantage of the new platform fully, you still have to customize other aspects of the app, such as some visual elements like the app icon, sign the package, and incorporate other specific features available in the new app model like notifications, Live Tiles, Action Center, and more.
At the Build conference in 2015, Microsoft announced four Universal Windows Platform bridges, with the goal of simplifying the conversion of existing applications from other platforms into Universal Windows applications, to distribute them through the Windows Store. Microsoft used this infographic (Src: bit.ly/uwp-bridge) to depict the goal of this project.
Windows desktop applications converted to Universal Windows platform (UWP) get full application identity, just like any other Universal Windows application. Eventually, you can publish them in the Windows Store, with standard application licensing options and full auto-update support. UWP application identity also gives them access to a much larger subset of UWP APIs than an ordinary desktop application. They can create live tiles, register background tasks with any trigger type, create app services, etc.
To make this transition process easier, an application package with a converted desktop application can include two separate executables: the original desktop one, and a separate Universal Windows component. Although they are running in two different processes, they can activate each other at the user interface level and communicate bi-directionally using app services (APIs similar to web services that a UWP application can expose). This process should allow a gradual migration of application functionalities from the legacy desktop process to the new UWP process.
Desktop App Converter will convert an existing game or desktop application (Win32, Windows Forms, or WPF-based) into a Universal Windows application package (*.appx). Until these packages are allowed into Windows Store, sideloading will be the only way to install them. In Windows 10, Microsoft removed all licensing restrictions for sideloading, making it available to all users. They only need to enable sideloading in Windows settings.
Although the desktop part of the package will keep using Win32 and .NET APIs in full trust mode, its environment will still be much more isolated than that of a standard non-converted desktop application. All its file system and registry access will be virtualized in a manner similar to App-V. Without any modifications to the application source code, the actual file system and registry will remain untouched. Any changes will automatically be written to the package local storage as if the UWP file and settings APIs were used.
The second one requires the new Containers Windows feature. The script will enable it and automatically reboot the computer, if necessary. The setup process will take a significant amount of time. Once it completes, you will be ready to run the converter on a desktop application of your choice with the following command: 2ff7e9595c
Comments