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Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

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Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#11

Post by amaks »

sz4kerto wrote: post #8
amaks wrote: post #7

Haven't looked at the APIs, but are the APIs going to scale between phone, tablet and 30" 4K monitors? It's relatively easy to make the same app to be adaptable between phone and tablet, or even laptop, but to make it look good on 30" 4K monitor is a completely different UX, if full screen. Or in high resolutions the apps run in windowed mode?

You can adapt any part of the app. I.e. you can simply migrate the app to be universal across devices, but if a specific part does not look good, then you can change the XAML/code behind for that part.

But do these "universal" apps still run full screen on 30" monitor? If so, then it's not a good UX. The benefit of a large high resolution monitor is to display lots of information at the same time, this frequently implies more than one app/window visible at the same time.

Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#12

Post by candl »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #5
yulaow wrote: post #2

This is imho the best news ever from microsoft. Now I can target serverside, frontend, windows8 devices and windowsphone all with one language (javascript for me). Not bad at all update: I have to add other news just announced. With winJS now we can target also xboxone, ios and android device And also the full framework is opensource under apache license update2: winJS on github https://github.com/winjs/winjs

I was worried that MS would drop support for WinJS and double down on XAML. Allowing fully native builds for Windows Phone from Javascript instead of just native wrappers is great, now if only iOS and Android would follow suit.

They've just announced they are making WinJS cross-platform and open source (under Apache license). Now I haven't used WinJS, I haven't ever developed a WinRT app (just a few for the Phone), but doesn't WinJS have a ton of quality components, even more so than WinRT XAML? This seems pretty awesome.

Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#13

Post by orf »

amaks wrote: post #11
sz4kerto wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can adapt any part of the app. I.e. you can simply migrate the app to be universal across devices, but if a specific part does not look good, then you can change the XAML/code behind for that part.

But do these "universal" apps still run full screen on 30" monitor? If so, then it's not a good UX. The benefit of a large high resolution monitor is to display lots of information at the same time, this frequently implies more than one app/window visible at the same time.

You can move any app so it takes up only a slice of your screen

Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#14

Post by revisionzero »

amaks wrote: post #11
sz4kerto wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can adapt any part of the app. I.e. you can simply migrate the app to be universal across devices, but if a specific part does not look good, then you can change the XAML/code behind for that part.

But do these "universal" apps still run full screen on 30" monitor? If so, then it's not a good UX. The benefit of a large high resolution monitor is to display lots of information at the same time, this frequently implies more than one app/window visible at the same time.

Yes, unless I am missing something. It's up to the developer (same as on Web w/ CSS Breakpoints) to accommodate the various 'breakpoints' or devices visually. To say it's poor UX is inaccurate, will there be plenty of unoptimized UI/UX full-screen apps? Sure, but the functionality itself is not poor UX.

Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#16

Post by jarjoura »

I see this as equivalent to writing one application that targets both iPhone and iPad and even Android with one app targeting tablets and phones. The only really new thing is support for a single application but the design and UI work still needs to be addressed for each screen size.

Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#17

Post by silversmith »

amaks wrote: post #7

Haven't looked at the APIs, but are the APIs going to scale between phone, tablet and 30" 4K monitors? It's relatively easy to make the same app to be adaptable between phone and tablet, or even laptop, but to make it look good on 30" 4K monitor is a completely different UX, if full screen. Or in high resolutions the apps run in windowed mode?

This just in: yes, you can run them windowed.

Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#18

Post by jbigelow76 »

candl wrote: post #12
jbigelow76 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was worried that MS would drop support for WinJS and double down on XAML. Allowing fully native builds for Windows Phone from Javascript instead of just native wrappers is great, now if only iOS and Android would follow suit.

They've just announced they are making WinJS cross-platform and open source (under Apache license). Now I haven't used WinJS, I haven't ever developed a WinRT app (just a few for the Phone), but doesn't WinJS have a ton of quality components, even more so than WinRT XAML? This seems pretty awesome.

I missed the cross platform part, I've been bouncing between the live stream and work this morning. So the claim is iOS apps with WinJS as if it had been built in Obj C with XIBs and not just a web view hosted in a native harness? If true that would be pretty amazing (it would probably also cause Xamarin to shit a brick)

Re: Microsoft introduces Universal Windows apps

#19

Post by sonnyz »

amaks wrote: post #11
sz4kerto wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can adapt any part of the app. I.e. you can simply migrate the app to be universal across devices, but if a specific part does not look good, then you can change the XAML/code behind for that part.

But do these "universal" apps still run full screen on 30" monitor? If so, then it's not a good UX. The benefit of a large high resolution monitor is to display lots of information at the same time, this frequently implies more than one app/window visible at the same time.

They just announced that you can make your apps run in a window, instead of full screen.
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