Windows 10 has been out for a few weeks now. I’ve upgraded one of my backup computers from 8.1 to Windows 10 (the Build I discussed a while back).

I’ve tried to like it. Really. I have. But I don’t, and I don’t see myself switching my main systems any time soon. Most of the new features I don’t like, and many of those new features that I don’t like cannot be shut off very easily. Others are QOL impacts. Not being able to customize my Title bar colour and severely removing all customization options, for example, I cannot get behind. I am not a fan of the Start Menu, nor do I like how they changed the start screen to mimick the new Start menu. I understand why these changes were made- primarily due to all the Windows 8 naysayers- but that doesn’t mean I need to like them.

Windows 10 also introduces the new Universal App Framework. This is designed to allow the creation of programs that run across Windows platforms. “Universal Windows Application” referring to the application being able to run on any system that is running Windows 10.

If I said “I really love the Windows 8 Modern UI design and Application design” I would be lying. Because I don’t. This is likely because I dislike Mobile apps in general and having that style of application not only brought to the desktop but bringing along the same type of limitations I find distasteful. I tried to create a quick Win8 style program based on one of our existing winforms programs but hit a brick wall because I would have had to extract all of our libraries and turn it into a web service, then have it running in the background of the program itself. I wasn’t able to find a way to say “I want a Windows 8 style with XAML, but I want to be able to have the same access as a desktop program”. It appears that this may have been rectified with the Windows 10 framework, as it is possible to target a Universal app and make it, errm- not universal- by setting it to be a Desktop Application. I hope- though have as of yet been unable to determine if that is possible and it is looking more and more like it isn’t. This makes my use case- to provide a Modern UI ‘App’ that makes use of my company’s established .NET Class Libraries – impossible. This is because for security reasons you cannot reference standard .NET Assemblies that are not in the GAC. I was thinking they might work if they are signed in some fashion, but I wasn’t able to find anything that would indicate that is the case.

the basic model, as I understand it, mimicks how typical Smartphone “apps” work. Typically they have restricted local access, and will access remote web services in order to perform more advanced features. This is fairly sensible since most smartphone apps are based off of web services. Of course, the issue is that this means porting any libraries that use those sorts of features to portable libraries which will access a web service for the required task. (For a desktop program, I imagine you could have the service running locally)

I’m more partial to desktop development. Heck right now, my work involves Windows Forms (beats the mainframe terminal systems the software replaces!) and even moving to WPF would be a significant engineering effort, so I keep my work with WPF and new Modern UI applications ‘off-the-clock’.

Regardless of my feelings regarding smartphone ‘apps’ or how it seems desktop has been taking a backseat or even being replaced (it’s not, it’s just not headline worthy), Microsoft has continued to provide excellent SDKs and Developer tools and documentation, and is always working to improve both. And even if there is a focus on the Universal Framework and Universal Applications, their current development tools still provide for the creation of Windows Forms applications, allowing the use of the latest C# features for those who might not have the luxury of simply jumping to new frameworks and technologies willy-nilly.

For those interested in keeping up to date who also have the luxury of time to do so (sigh!) The new Windows development Tools are available for free. One can also read about What’s New within the Windows development ecosystem with Windows 10, And there are also Online courses regarding Windows 10 at the Microsoft Virtual Academy, as well as videos and tutorials on Channel9.