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Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#91

Post by icebraining »

flukus wrote: post #86
icebraining wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best trade off I've seen is what Nokia's S60 (and iOS, or so I've heard) did: have granular permissions like Android, but show a dialog when the app first tries to use them, instead of having a laundry list at installation time. You're more likely to think twice when you open your flashlight app and it asks "Do you want to allow [Flashlight App] to read all your contacts?"

It that once off or every time? There have been a few Android apps that started off OK and transitioned to spyware.

Can't remember. Still, I don't think it matters - if you know an app has turned into spyware, why are you opening it again instead of uninstalling it?

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#92

Post by benaadams »

flukus wrote: post #88
benaadams wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You go via the Save/Load dialogs which give access to a file; apps just aren't given non-permission/user-interaction file enumeration by default except for certain directories https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/uwp/files/file-acce...

Sounds like it's not possible to create a custom file manager, or space visualizer or anything like that?

"System Level Access to All User Data" permission?

Though you can't submit to store with request for that permission: https://msdn.microsoft.com/windows/uwp/packaging/app-capabil...

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#93

Post by benaadams »

kodfodrasz wrote: post #54
swiley wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The global filesystem is only a problem if you run lots of closed source/untrustworthy apps. Many of us don't and use the global filesystem very heavily and very much hope it does not go away.

I guess you also only then need a firewall, if you use closed source software. When using OpenSource software you can always be sure that nothing will do unauthorized access to your network, willingly or accidentally...

That's a bit naive... Just two examples

OpenSSL has had 22 vulnerabilities in 2016 so far [1]

Linux has has 336 vulnerabilities in 2016 so far [2]

[1] https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/statistics-results?adv_se...

[2] https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/statistics-results?adv_se...

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#94

Post by the_trapper »

garganzol wrote: post #43
nickpp wrote: post #9

OK. So I converted our app from MSI to AppX (using Advanced Installer so it was just another output from the same project). Publishing to Store is underway. What next? What are the UWP APIs/functionality worth adding to an existing Win32 app?

30% cut from your revenue.

That's kind of a narrow view. There's nothing preventing you from continuing to sell your software directly, and just about any other retailer/publisher will take a similar share of your revenue.

The upshot is that by putting your software in the Windows store, there is a chance that you will gain new users that would have never found your product otherwise. It also removes some of your overhead considering that Microsoft hosts the software themselves, handling payment, storage, and bandwidth for you.

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#95

Post by pjc50 »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #75
pjc50 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> schadenfreude They've built up an enourmous reserve of ill-will that will take years to diminish. It wasn't all that many years ago that they were tangentially involved in SCO's last-ditch attempt to destroy Linux. The Win10 telemetry and forced-updates controversies are ongoing. Everyone can see a possible future in which all the doors for shipping software to users' computers without paying 30% to the platform ho…

It actually was a long time ago that they were "tangentially involved in SCO". That was a very long time ago. My children were babies when that happened. THEY ARE IN COLLEGE NOW. BTW. That was mainly IBM and Novell that you want to be mad at. Microsoft made a licensing deal with SCO to license Unix. Wow. You really have to reach back on that one. You could have more reasonably chosen how they treated Netscape. No one…

(Someone has downvoted you, wasn't me)

In re malware and walled gardens, I certainly don't have a solution, but I've been writing a chart of the extent of the problem: https://github.com/pjc50/pjc50.github.io/blob/master/pentagr...

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#96

Post by walterbell »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #89
Animats wrote: post #15

The day will come when you won't be able to install an "app" from anywhere other than the Windows Store. Microsoft will want a big cut of the sale price. Bad security is a feature. If platforms were secure against hostile applications, we wouldn't need app stores.

I don't know why this is buried, it is absolutely true. What windows users need are some sort of sandbox / container / jail where registry / file system / system calls are isolated. Then you could package up a program into one file and delete it to uninstall it like one file. This could have been done decades ago and now microsoft is banking off of the fact that they never did.

Doesn't App-V / Desktop Bridge provide exactly this sandbox?

If the resulting file can be distributed outside the Windows app store, the developer can avoid the appstore tax and retain access to a direct customer billing relationship. If signing of the sandboxed-app-installer is required, $100/year (or other tolerable fixed cost) is still better than a 30% tax on every sale.

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#97

Post by jmkni »

douche wrote: post #76
youdontknowtho wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who actually make money on windows development know that WPF and Win32 are not deprecated. In fact, they don't really deprecate things. They may stop pushing something as the new hotness...but VB6 apps still run on windows. Those data access technologies that no one uses anymore...those still work on windows. If you are worried about your investment in time not being the new hotness, well that's one thing. If…

Silverlight may be the one glaring exception to that rule that I can think of. I don't think even IE or Edge support that anymore, which makes it dead. I had an ex-girlfriend whose employer made a big bet on Silverlight for their web app platform... in 2012. Having to rewrite it all in HTML5 and JS a year later almost put them under.

Couldn't they have ported to WPF with a lot less effort?

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#98

Post by jmkni »

benaadams wrote: post #4
flukus wrote: post #2

And all you have to do is convert it into a UWP app: >A few months ago, during Build 2016, we announced the Desktop Bridge, enabling developers to bring their existing desktop apps and games over to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) by converting their app or game with the Desktop App Converter and then enhancing and extending it with UWP functionality. This then enables the path to gradually migrate the app or ga…

You run the converter on your complied exe installer, not your applications code. That a fairly low barrier. Seems to make the Store very backwards compatible, it can even convert VB6 apps: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PuttingMyVB6WindowsAppsInTheWi... Also if you want to go from exe rather than installer you can use makeappx directly https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/porting/desktop...

Wouldn't this make it easy for people to convert other peoples applications and upload them to the store? Especially if you don't need access to the code.

I wonder what barriers MS has in place to prevent that sort of piracy?

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#99

Post by diego_moita »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #89
Animats wrote: post #15

The day will come when you won't be able to install an "app" from anywhere other than the Windows Store. Microsoft will want a big cut of the sale price. Bad security is a feature. If platforms were secure against hostile applications, we wouldn't need app stores.

I don't know why this is buried, it is absolutely true. What windows users need are some sort of sandbox / container / jail where registry / file system / system calls are isolated. Then you could package up a program into one file and delete it to uninstall it like one file. This could have been done decades ago and now microsoft is banking off of the fact that they never did.

> I don't know why this is buried

Because it is the typical anti-M$ conspiracy theory. It blames on "evil" what it can't understand.

Win32 is not insecure because they wanted to sell security. It is what it is because that's what made sense at the time, before Internet and viruses appeared, memory was restrained and virtualization and sandboxing were obscure techniques and processing power and memory were severely constrained.

The "could have been done decades ago" is not that simple. One way or the other it should imply in limiting direct access to resources by programmers. And, giving how big the Win32 ecosystem became, that's more political than technical.

Re: Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store

#100

Post by wolfgke »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #35
MayeulC wrote: post #31

> converting their app or game with the Desktop App Converter and then enhancing and extending it with UWP functionality The keyword here is probably "extending". I am not aware of what it really means, but I wouldn't be surprised if MS tried everything it could to get more developers on its UWP. And keep them.

It just means using some API's that aren't available unless your app is well behaved. No admin access is the big one. Don't write to \Windows or Program Files. That kind of thing. It doesn't mean...whatever paranoid thing you think it means. Also, its a developer related thing. If you don't have a desktop app that you want to move to the store or bundle in an Appx package for distribution on the web, it doesn't mean…

> It just means using some API's that aren't available unless your app is well behaved. No admin access is the big one. Don't write to \Windows or Program Files. That kind of thing.

Does this also include "allocate executable memory" (you need this if you write a JIT compiler)?

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