Microsoft's glorious dream – Windows 10's first productivity UWP

Computer Store News: As early as Microsoft announced Windows 10, the unified platform-wide experience became the most important keyword, and the most important tool to achieve this ideal is "Universal Windows Platform" (Universal Windows Platform) , UWP)”. UWP, which can be used as a platform name, or Appx file, is another application that Microsoft has added to Windows 10 and is independent of Win32 programs. It can also be viewed as a collection of Appx files. UWP itself can be seen as a spiritual legacy of the Win8 Metro app. Compared with traditional Win32 applications, UWP applications can provide a unified full-platform experience with low memory footprint, high hardware affinity, green purity without added, and no residue for unloading.

The reason why the whole platform is emphasized is that UWP can adapt to x86, Windows Mobile, Windows Band, Surface, Surface Hub, Xbox One and even mixed reality devices HoloLens and objects according to development requirements. Environments such as networked devices (IoT). According to Microsoft, simply by throwing the code into Visual Studio 2015, you can switch to a UWP app that can get the same experience on any of the above platforms.

As early as Ballmer’s Windows 8/8.1 system with a versatile and exciting approach to the mobile market, Microsoft’s full platform ideal can be seen: embedded systems The level of OneDrive cloud service, across all Windows (Phone) 8 or more devices, makes synchronization not only impossible to escape (unless you must use a local account), but also allows users to discover the convenience of cross-platform services. As a result, Microsoft accounts have become more important and become the key to the entire platform.

In addition, the UI style and operation logic have become closer to the tablet mobile device, but the most important Metro application is born, the prototype of UWP in the future (in fact, UWP can be regarded as a superset of WinRT) There are cross-platform genes and shadows at the beginning. Lightweight body shape, thoughtful hardware optimization, and a chic UI style all make Microsoft's big-bang, although no one is willing to mention this abandonment.

The flat design style actually implies the operational logic of the mobile platform

The fate of Windows 8 failure and the market performance of the Metro application have been proven, everyone What is “cross-platform”, what is “unified experience” is not as strong as the starting menu is strong —— as if the world’s users have become enough to use the party overnight, what is the unified experience? What about cross-platform content sharing? Isn't the historical mission of Windows work?

Xiaobian is a magnetic paste fundamentalist

In order to block their mouths, Microsoft officially announced the 2014 winter conference. Windows 10 system, and started a long public beta road. In Windows 10, they re-joined the Metro's half-start menu. At this time, the Metro UI has been renamed to Modern UI, but the original tile is exquisite, flexible, simple, and kaleidoscopic, but it has changed. Empty skin, a blank check with an empty face and no soul.

The most important thing is the UWP project officially announced at the Build 2015 conference in the second year. A single tool is needed to develop a platform plan that supports all Windows 10 platforms on one platform. In other words, as long as you can run Windows 10, you can support native UWP applications. More ambitious is that Microsoft also launched Project Westminster, Centennial, Astoria, IslandWood four programs, respectively, facing Java front-end web applications, traditional x86 applications (.exe), Android Java applications and iOS Objective-C applications In order to achieve this, Microsoft released a special development tool: Visual Studio 2015 Code: A tool that can be quickly converted to UWP as long as the application is thrown in.

Visual Studio 2015 Code launched a beta version since last year's Build 2015, and launched an open source beta test in November, and ended up two months ago. In April, the official version 1.0 was officially ushered in.

It seems that UWP is like a different pocket. Isn't it? A code, an application can be turned into a variety of multi-platform applications, as long as it is thrown in, how can Microsoft do it? To put it simply, like Microsoft's best at "all compatible with your family," they streamlined traditional Runtime, Win32 API compression to a small enough kernel, similar to an intersection.

When it's streamlined to the point where even the Microsoft Band is running, package it in development tools and app stores (yes, Microsoft's app store is unified) when developers submit apps. At the time, the development tool can directly obtain a part of the API of the intersection. When the user downloads and installs in the application store, the system automatically recognizes the environment of the device (ARM, Xbox, HoloLens), and compiles the remaining kernel API in this environment. Complement, a set of Lego toy-like UWPs is realized, freely disassembled, freely combined.

Although the destiny of Project Astoria and Project IshlandWood, which was originally intended to fit Android on iOS devices, is not as good as it is, UWP is destined to be successful and future-oriented. Compared to the previous Metro application, there are more and more UWP applications, because UWP is truly revolutionary and predictable. If the unified experience of the whole platform can't satisfy you, then think about the pure and safe running environment? Compared to our common free-running Win32 programs, UWP is also running in a sandbox environment, the permissions and resources that can be called are very strict, plus UWP comes from the only application store (yes, UWP is a closed platform) ), security is naturally more guaranteed. In addition, because of the hardware and memory management of the Scratch Space in the sandbox environment, it is naturally more demanding for hardware resources. Therefore, in addition to some specific professional tasks, the average light user can completely try to replace the Win32 application with UWP.

First, the whole platform, experience unified

Imagine, on your mobile phone (don't buy Lumia), bracelet, tablet, PC, Xbox, Surface Hub, HoloLens, IoT, etc. Devices that can run Windows 10 can experience an undifferentiated, unified, cloud-synchronized application experience, and the development difficulty is not high. And Microsoft's efforts to promote Windows 10 have been much higher than Windows 8.

Second, lightweight, compact

Lightweight body is another important advantage of UWP, taking foobar2000 as an example, the size is only 13.5MB, and the Blueflap browser is 35.4MB. Small applications can often do what traditional hundreds of megabytes of Win32 programs can do, plus more flexible and linear space management techniques, which are more advantageous when compared with Win32 programs.

Third, running in a sandbox environment, the source is closed, the harm is low

The security of closed iOS has always been praised by fruit powder, in fact, because the source of UWP is a unified application store, UWP It is also considered a closed sandbox application platform, but there are too many devices in this platform. Due to the characteristics of the sandbox mechanism itself and the review of the unified market, UWP has a more optimistic security performance, at least there is a possibility that the greasy sister-in-law or the bundling installation is not possible.

Fourth, low configuration, optimized, low memory footprint, suitable for patients with cleansing and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Thanks to the characteristics of the sandbox mechanism, UWP memory and hard disk are inconsistent for Win32 programs. One reason why sandbox applications do not endanger the operating system is that they cannot permanently write data on the hard disk. Memory is also subject to more restrictions, so even old machines can run UWP.

Five, standard specifications, beautiful design

Of course, every platform where the world is alive, the boutique is a minority. Here are some excellent UWPs recommended by Xiaobian, especially SpotBright. I suggest you try it out

Excellent UWP recommendation:

SpotBright——Specially download Windows Focus Wallpaper, 6 yuan to advertise

Perfect Weather——may be the best weather app

NetEase cloud music —— probably the best music Social applications

哔哩哔哩

Foobar2000

Wikio--Wikipedia third party Application

Loadkit——TorrentBT Download Tool