Win32 and .NET desktop apps can now be published in the Windows Store • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:10 PM UTC

oridecon wrote: post #112

Too bad you still need a Microsoft account to use the store, besides sideloading. That's a deal breaker for me, at least on the desktop (I know you can login separately on each app). 1) How good is the sandbox? I followed the links but how battle-tested is it? What if you put an already sandboxed Chrome inside UWP, does it basically use almost the same calls or there are some extra benefits? Besides FS isolation. 2)…

The sandbox here seems somewhat battle-hardened, as it is based on App-V (and some other container systems in Windows), which Enterprises have used for a while and Office has used for every desktop install for several major releases (since 2013 or 2010?).

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

#122

Post by youdontknowtho » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:17 PM UTC

whiskahs wrote: post #115

youdontknowtho wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do what now? Does that mean that I can't build apps in C++ anymore? Because it looks like I can and it also looks like I have more options than I ever have. In fact, I can finally use standard ISO c++ to do more than ever. Do you just mean one UI toolkit over another? I wonder how Adobe has "kept talent" without rebuilding photoshop? If you are worried about keeping your personal skills up to date and focused on an a…

They kind of did rebuild photoshop. And Acrobat. And pretty much every one of their products after the Creative Cloud move.

Still using C++ and Windows API's. Also, how many prior versions of Photoshop still run on Windows with no modification? Probably all of them.

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

#123

Post by youdontknowtho » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:19 PM UTC

WorldMaker wrote: post #113

youdontknowtho wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the direction things are heading. If you look at the compositor API's they are trying to make the whole XAML layer easier to interop with DX because DX is where the perf and flexibility are.

Right, a big push to the XAML stack with the Anniversary Update was a lot of beefy pushes to what's called the "Visual Layer" [1]. A lot of the focus seems to be on making sure that you use high level XAML components and low level DirectX code side-by-side in the same windows. [1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/graphics/visual...

There is a guy named Kenny Kerr that produced a library called "Modern Windows" or something like that. He has a PluralSight course...I think at least part of it is on youtube...where he demonstrate using it.

His stuff is just worth watching anyway. Awesome Windows dev and ISO C++ content.

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

#124

Post by youdontknowtho » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:27 PM UTC

pweissbrod wrote: post #108

youdontknowtho wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

2004-2012 I built apps of significant size/$$ for clients employing poorly recommended microsoft tech including silverlight, infopath, webforms, datasets, windows phone 7 and 8, WCF. Hindisght is 2020 and shame partially on me but when you try to be sensible and follow the official recommendations you develop this instinctive flinch over time that happens when microsoft comes out with re-inventions that converts your…

It's funny you mention InfoPath. I know of at least two multi-billion dollar companies that have significant amounts of development time tied up in InfoPath. All of its still running, with the plan being to replace it over time.

Still just sitting there running.

No need for pardon's. Use what you like that gets the work done. My instinctive flinch is different. We all have them. That's the thing, I don't want you to switch. I don't care. I love open source software. What I am saying is that they have a lot of effort built into backwards compatibility. And those solutions may not be the latest hotness, but you can still run them.

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

#125

Post by m_fayer » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:28 PM UTC

WorldMaker wrote: post #111

koko775 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WinRT means: * No app closure callbacks. You don't know if it's suspending or exiting. * No "are you sure you want to exit? Save/Don't save" dialogs. If you close or crash pray your data was saved, and if it takes a long time to flush to disk...really pray. * No minimizing/backgrounding to tray icons allowed.

There is a Suspending callback. Sounds like you have some misconceptions about the UWP/WinRT application lifecycle: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/launch-resume/a...

If I recall correctly, this callback has some undocumented deadline. Go over that and it's unceremoniously killed, great way to corrupt whatever you're desperately trying to write to disk.

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

#126

Post by swiley » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:38 PM UTC

UK-AL wrote: post #119

garganzol wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An average user is a myth. Every kind of average user has its own traits and they differ widely. That's why there is such thing as system settings. And yes, most desktop users are conscious when they work with files. Windows by default suggests "My Documents" folder as a target destination which is a pretty sane safe choice for all traits of average Joes.

That not the issue though. Programs that plaster your registry full of crap or replace or change os files etc

Don't run stuff as root then.

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

#127

Post by youdontknowtho » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

chokolad wrote: post #109

youdontknowtho wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Visual Studio Code...not core. And it's not a skin it's an actively developed fork of Atom. no windows is not MIT. nor is system center. PowerShell is. PowerShell DSC is. Their OMI broker for Linux is. .Net is. Asp.net is. Their Python tools are. The C# language is developed on video streams with the product team and the community. F# has been open source for a long time. They contribute to Linux, Mesos, docker,…

> It's Visual Studio Code...not core. And it's not a skin it's an actively developed fork of Atom. It's not a fork of Atom. It's independently developed text editor/light IDE which runs on Electron, chromium toolkit created by Atom devs to ease creation of desktop applications using JavaScript and HTML.

Indeed. I stand corrected, and thank you. That's good to know.

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

#128

Post by nightski » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 5:04 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #56

flukus wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it may take their desktop with it. The industry doesn't want to invest in a desktop windows app because there is no clear direction. WPF/Win32 etc seem to be getting deprecated, but UWP is too limited.

Desktop Windows is clearly the technology of the past, and I say that as someone who develops on it every day. People starting in a green field will build a web or a mobile app if at all possible. The cases where it isn't are basically games and what used to be called "workstation" apps: big chunky tools like SolidWorks. Even Adobe have retreated to the cloud, although the tools still run locally.

It is not in the least. There are millions of gamers, creative professionals, developers, engineers, etc.. that use desktop applications on Windows every single day and that will not change any time soon.

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

#129

Post by brudgers » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #17

flohofwoe wrote: post #13

So if I understand it right, this is basically running apps in a Win32-emulator/sandbox where all 'unsafe' Win32 file and registry accesses are redirected into sandboxed locations. I wonder why MS didn't go this way from the beginning instead of pushing that Frankensteinian half-desktop/half-mobile monstrosity called WinRT^H^H^H UWP on us. The UWP application model has been modelled after the (now 10 years old) iOS/A…

The introductory phrase of UWP explains why they pushed it: "A Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app can run on any Windows-based device, from your phone to your tablet or PC" . The point was getting more applications for their mobile platform by coaxing developers who might have otherwise built a desktop-only application. I'd say this new development is essentially an admission of defeat on mobile.

My understanding is that the 'Universal Windows Platform' is comprised of disparate multiple non-universal platforms such as desktops, mobile devices, servers, clouds, and IOT things. In practice this means that a UWP application targets one or more platforms and not all of them, e.g. Microsoft's UWP Camera app doesn't target the Azure or Server platforms.

My take is that Microsoft is in mobile for the long term and that its strategy has been to gradually migrate the target uses first addressed with Windows CE into the mainline of Windows and that Windows 10 is the realization of that strategy...we're back running Excel on mobile devices.

Windows Phone 7 was the first step in that direction. Windows Phone 8 and Windows RT were intermediate steps toward hardware agnosticism and away from Wintel strategies. I call it an intermediate step because apps for those platforms were [at least largely] forward compatible to Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile.

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

#130

Post by abz10 » Thu, Sep 15, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

the_trapper wrote: post #94

garganzol wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Micr…

Hosting an installer is trivial, basically free, and likely less effort than dealing with the MS store. Their search is terrible (I work in search) and their reach is poor - people have been trained not to trust the store and most ignore it completely.

The biggest benefit would have to be copy protection. Copy protection is hard to do because MS has made it hard intentionally for both technical and privacy reasons. Also the people making these decisions at MS are also on the payroll of the installer companies who benefit from not having a workable and freely available alternative. And there was no insentive internally at MS to fix it because bonuses are tied to the new metro stuff.

If you're doing something mass market then 30% might be worth it. But if you're niche, which is MSs bread and butter, and stickiness, then it will not be worth it. Which is an idiotic position for MS to be putting people in.

I predict continued failure of the App Store which will erode Microsoft's dominance in the long tail. The only thing keeping me on Windows is WPF and legacy customers.