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Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

arstechnica.com

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Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#71

Post by pjmlp »

maxxxxx wrote: post #66
maxsilver wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found one working enterprise use case. UWP is great if you are exclusively deploying to brand new Windows 10 Embedded devices. (I think this is now called "Windows IoT Core" or something similar). That's what I've been using it for, and that's worked well. It carries a nice side benefit that our sales team all has Windows 10 Pro laptops, and UWP 'just works' there too for sales demos, presentations, and such.…

"UWP is great if you are exclusively deploying to brand new Windows 10 Embedded devices. (I think this is now called "Windows IoT Core" or something similar). That's what I've been using it for, and that's worked well. It carries a nice side benefit that our sales team all has Windows 10 Pro laptops, and UWP 'just works' there too for sales demos, presentations, and such." This would be a great thing for us. But we a…

Apparently via XAML Islands as shown at BUILD and this week's Ignite.

Now in face of this announcement, not sure.

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#75

Post by rpeden »

FlorianRappl wrote: post #6

When I first looked at WinRT app development I thought "how are they going to sell it with these limitations and incompatibilities?" and they did not. UWP was a slightly improved version on WinRT, but it still had some of the same core issues. Luckily, Microsoft has some kind of exit strategy already - I just wonder where that leads. That all being said: Microsoft should still invest in their desktop stack (especiall…

It's nice that they're at least bringing WinForms and WPF to .NET Core.

I'm looking forward to using UWP components in WPF apps, though I imagine that'll only work on Windows 10.

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#77

Post by cjarrett »

mrweasel wrote: post #29
pawelmurias wrote: post #15

Touch centered desktop uis need to die

One of the features I specifically look for in a laptop is "NO TOUCH SCREEN". I really don't understand it. Why would I want touch on a laptop or desktop PC?

I actually love mine on my Razer Blade. Admittedly, I don't use it too much, but I find myself on occasion wanting to touch my MBP.

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#78

Post by bhauer »

The headline is misleading. Microsoft is suspending development of the UWP Office applications, which happen to be touch-friendly. However, the headline implies that the remaining Win32 versions do not have a touch-friendly mode, which is false.

The Win32 versions can be switched between "mouse" and "touch" modes. In touch mode, the pointing targets are all much larger. But as with most user interfaces on modern Windows, even in mouse mode, the Office user interface can be used by touch. Running in mouse mode doesn't remove the helpful pop-up action bar when you've selected text, for example, it just makes the UI elements render more tightly.

For the several years I've used a Surface device with a touch screen, I've never used the UWP versions of the Office applications because they never reached feature parity with the Win32 versions. The UWP versions had a subset of functionality; not the same subset but similar in limitations to the web versions. But that doesn't mean I don't use a touch-friendly application suite—I simply use the Win32 versions in both mouse and touch modes.

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#79

Post by maxxxxx »

013a wrote: post #58

Just 4 months ago they announced they were suspending development of OneNote Win32 in favor of just the UWP version [1] Moreover, they have (had?) an entire multi-year roadmap planned around UWP, including the eventual release of a version of windows which was supposed to substantially reduce day-to-day reliance on Win32 for lower powered devices, codenamed Project Polaris [2], in an attempt to compete with Chromeboo…

"If Microsoft can't even release their marquee apps on it, why should anyone else feel confident in developing on the platform?"

That's why I avoid any kind of Windows desktop development. They release a new framework every 2-3 years and developers are expected to adopt it. But then they drop support for that framework quickly and release a new incompatible one.

In the Windows environment choice is bad. You only have bad choices and the frameworks that are being used for flagship apps like Office are not available to devs.

I really envy iOS devs where the path to an app is straightforward and your biggest problem is to use ObjectivC or Swift.

Re: Microsoft suspends development of touch-friendly UWP Office apps for Windows

#80

Post by maxxxxx »

vbezhenar wrote: post #69
chris_wot wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find most remarkable is that they are still using Win32!

Win32 probably is just WinAPI, not necessarily 32-bit application.

Correct. I have never heard the term Win64.
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