I have a Windows Phone 8.1 Silverlight application which is in the store now. Since i see that Microsoft is moving all the attention towards WINRT and Universal Apps, i suspect that there will be limited or no support for Silverlight Apps in Windows 10.
There might be a tablet project that i might roll out for the same project in the future. So i am in the dilemma to convert the Silveright projects in my solution to WINRT or convert them into Universal Apps.Also, i hear that converting to Universal projects are pretty hard as well.And I understand that the bulk of the work will be in porting the UI to Hub Style UI.
Any ideas? Comments on the best approach to take here.
A WinRT app is a Windows only app (not for Phone). Other than that, WinRT and Universal apps are quite similar. They have the same namespaces, classes, controls... almost everything. You can use many WinRT libraries in Universal apps without any problem. And so, porting to them is generally the same, too.
Windows Store and Windows Phone apps generally need different UI anyway, so you would have to work on that, no matter what you do.
One difference is that a WinRT app would work on Windows 8.0 and up, and a Universal app would require Windows 8.1 (or WP 8.1 for phones). Actually, a Windows 8.1 app IS a Universal app. Just like a Windows Phone 8.1 app (not the Silverlight variation) is a Universal app.
I'd recommend porting to a Universal app as you would get used to working with these apps, and they work on both platforms (Windows and Phone). For any future project, that's the way to go.
In the company I work for, we switched to Universal apps a few months ago. Figuring out what UI we would use on both platforms and how to do it properly, as well as porting our existing libraries did take some time (not too much), but now making a new app and supporting both platforms is very easy. So, for me, that's the way to go.
It is quite unlikely that Microsoft will stop supporting Silverlight Apps in the Windows 10 version for phones. Even WP8.1 still supports XNA Games from the WP7.0 era.
Depending on the APIs you are using in your libraries the majority of changes when converting from Silverlight to WinRT will be on the UI side, e.g. if your Silverlight App already uses the LocalStorage-APIs instead of the IsolatedStorage-APIs that won't even have to be changed.
My advice would be the following:
evaluate wether all functionality you need is supported in Universal Apps (some functionality is currently only available in Silverlight Apps)
evaluate wether the actual APIs you are using are supported in Universal Apps or need to be replaced (IsolatedStorage => LocalStorage, etc.)
Armed with that knowledge I'd guess you will be able to better plan on when to port your App to the new APIs. If a tablet version is likely in the future and all required APIs are supported in the Universal App Model porting sooner will likely require less effort than porting later.
Related
I have a Windows phone 8.1 Silverlight application.
Now I need to make it run also on windows 10 phones and tablets. I checked and the app is available on windows 10 phones, even if deployed for windows 8.1 but it seems like I can't install it on windows 10 tablets.
My question is pretty simple:
Is there a "fast way" for converting the 8.1 project to UWP?
Can I deploy my app for tablets without re-writing all the code?
Thanks all
This question is oddly similar to one that I answered just yesterday. It's not really a duplicate so I will restate the answer here along with a link to the other question (1)
Unfortunately there is no easy and fully automated way to port your Silverlight app to UWP mostly because the API footprint has changed and updated between the 2 platforms. There are a lot of similarities but also a lot of breaking changes that require some manual changes.
here is Microsoft's guidance for this particular upgrade path.
From the article above:
Note This guide is designed to help you port your Windows Phone Silverlight app to Windows 10 manually. In addition to using the information in this guide to port your app, you can try the developer preview of Mobilize.NET's Silverlight Bridge to help automate the porting process. This tool analyzes your app's source code and converts references to Windows Phone Silverlight controls and APIs to their UWP counterparts. Because this tool is still in developer preview, it does not yet handle all conversion scenarios. However, most developers should be able to save some time and effort by starting with this tool. To try the developer preview, visit Mobilize.NET's website.
[1] Can a Silverlight out-of-browser app be converted to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app?
For some reason everything I've found online says that the Accelerometer class is only for winRT applications and I can't use it unless I code against winRT. I dont understand what winRT is. And my app can't be a metro style app because I need special access to different APIs that I've read can only be accessed in a WPF app. Also windows 8 metro style apps wont work with windows 7 which I would like my app to work for. Also I've only recently started programming so explain it to me like I'm a 4 year old.
Thanks!
The accelerometer you are referring to is a specific WinRT (Windows RunTime) class which is not available in .NET.
WinRT API was made for phones and tablets, but also integrated in Windows 8 / 8.1. It's basically the API for 'Metro' apps and therefore requires such an app. It will definitely not work for Windows 7, since WinRT is not available for this OS. I'm also somehow wondering, why you would need an accelerometer on Win7 (Notebook?), but that is a different topic.
I've once tried to get WinRT stuff working in C#.NET, and to my knowledge, this is not possible.
If you can provide us any additional information about your idea, maybe we can offer you an acceptable alternative.
When I create new Windows Phone project I have an option to create a "Windows Phone" or "Windows Phone Silverlight" app. I know that they have different runtimes and different APIs.
I was under the impression that Microsoft wants to unify Windows and Windows Phone platforms so why is there even a Silverlight version? What benefits does it bring?
Also, if I want to create an app just for Windows Phone and never have plans to bring it to Windows, what should I choose, Silverlight or Windows Phone?
I'd suggest you go with "Windows Phone" (non-Silverlight). It's the new API, which works for both Windows and Windows Phone. At some point you may want to port the app or create a new one for Windows and you'll already know the API (and porting will be way easier). Also, the new API will most likely get more updates and features added, and at some point you may even be forced to update to it (either because the old one is no longer supported, or because it does not have some features that you need).
As it was said in the other answers - the Silverlight option is there only for backward compatibility and is likely to be phased out in time. That is - it's good if you already know the API and have many libraries (yours or others) for WP Silverlight, but if you're just starting - you'd better go for the new technology.
Edit
There is one other thing to consider before choosing between the two types of apps. Some features are only available in a Silverlight app, and others (smaller amount) - only in a Xaml app. Here's an article with some info on the differences: Migrating your Windows Phone 8 app to a Windows Runtime XAML app
Windows RT Xaml is quite new and People have to generate some knowledge first.
Silverlight for phone has been around for years and there's a load of tools available: Phone Toolkit, diverse Controls, etc.
Just killing it off would have hurt many developers who built up intellectual property over a long time forcing them to start over.
When starting a project with Silverlight you will have more things around that help you get stuff done.
When starting with WinRT Xaml, you will have better performance, but will have to figure a lot out by yourself.
So the Silverlight option is there to not throw of Silverlight developers.
I recently started a new project on WinRT Xaml and my experience was that I had to recreate a lot of common tools like Caches, etc. But also a lot of things that were in Toolkits previously are now part of the platform itself. Also, when moving over to Windows 8, you get to share a lot of code which is nice.
Unifying the environment(s) would be ideal. In my opinion, it hasn't been very successful. At one point in time, you could only develop under Silverlight, so what you are seeing is just a newer version of the same thing to keep backwards compatibility as well as to keep Silverlight's developers happy. In the future, it will probably be phased out. Plus if you want to support older Phones, Silverlight is basically your only choice (you'll be surprise, how many WP users haven't updated their 8.0 to 8.1)
There really isn't any other real benefit of Silverlight other than maybe the Windows Phone Toolkit which has been tremendously useful (you can see how many SO's answers rely on this simple addon). Once the universal runtime gets fleshed out to the point where the documentation reflects what's actually available -- then I think it would be the default project for developing in Windows going forward.
If you're just starting, I would use Silverlight the knowledge based is much greater. After you get use to the WP environment then switch to runtime.
I begin to use windows phone 8.1 SDK but there are some strange things i don't understand, one of this complicated things why there are different frameworks Silverlight and the default xaml, also what is the difference between them and when i use this or this ?
One huge difference is of course that the Store Apps supports Universal Apps, where you can easily share almost all all of the code across WP8.1 and Windows 8.1 (including XAML).
But it is Worth noting that there are several features which some apps might require which is only available for WP8.1 Silverlight apps, such as:
VoIP support
Act as Lock screen background provider
Act as a Lens app
Let app extend search results using search extras
Provide ringtones
And a few other listed here along with a feature mapping from WP8 to WP8.1 Silverlight and Store Apps: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/dn642486(v=vs.105).aspx
If you are starting a new app and will not need any of these features a Store app is probably the better choice though.
If I understand your question correctly, let me put some sentences from MSDN...
why there are different frameworks Silverlight and the default xaml,
also what is the difference between them and when i use this or this ?
In Visual Studio 2013 Microsoft has come up with an approach where you can build Apps for
Phone as well as for Desktop and tabs simultaneously. A unique concept of Universal Apps.
Build an app for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 at the same time,
and share code, user controls, styles, strings and other assets between them
So if you are going to develop an Apps targeting both the platform, then Universal apps concept is good.
But if you are targeting only the new features of Windows Phone 8.1 then you should start with Silverlight "Blank App (Windows Phone Silverlight)"
As in MSDN its clearly mentioned.
The names of some templates have (Windows Phone Silverlight) appended
to the end. Consider using these templates if you've previously developed
for Windows Phone 8 and just want to access some of the new features available
to Windows Phone apps without having to significantly modify your existing
code. You can use these templates to create apps only for Windows Phone 8.1
More details MSDN Link
Windows Phone Silverlight is Windows Phone 8 deployments where obviously the WP 8.1 is deployment for WP 8.1
The main difference is that the WP 8.1 can use the cross platform DLLs where as WP 8 can not. There are many other framework differences but this is a huge one.
Is there any future of winform and wpf app in smart phone or tablet market. will we be able to develop applications for window store on winform or wpf. Or are they a dead technology
Thanks
I don't think they will be dead so soon. may be yes for Winforms. but still there are tons of applications that are running on Winforms and even on consoles.
you can use XAML for smart phones as well as tables. even WinRT supports XAML. also there are new libraries out there you can write programs targeting multiple platforms such as Portable Class Library
The new standard for building desktop applications is WPF. This is currently not deprecated and will not be for the foreseeable future. When developing for Windows phones and tablets there is an API very similar to WPF in structure/feel (using XAML).