Introducing the New UWP Community Toolkit

Original author: Giorgio Sardo, David Catuhe
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Recently, we released the anniversary update of Windows 10 and the new Windows Software Developer Kit (SDK), which contains tools, application templates, controls, Windows Runtime APIs, emulators and much more, helping to create innovative and attractive applications of the universal Windows platform.

Today we are introducing the open-source UWP Community Toolkit , a new project that allows the development community to interact and contribute as new features in addition to the SDK.

We created this set of tools with the following goals:
1. Simplification of application development : toolkit includes new features (helper functions / helper-s, user controls and application services) that simplify or demonstrate most of the developer's tasks. Here, our potential goal is to enable developers to work with just one line of code.
2. Open-Source : a set of tools (source code, tasks and action plan) will be developed as an open-source project. We welcome the contributions of the .Net community.
3. Consistency with the SDK : Community feedback on this project will be considered when developing future versions of the Windows SDK for Windows 10.

For example, toolkit makes it easy to share content from your application with social networks such as Twitter, taking care of OAuth authentication:

// Initialize service
TwitterService.Instance.Initialize("ConsumerKey", "ConsumerSecret", "CallbackUri");
// Login to Twitterawait TwitterService.Instance.LoginAsync();
// Post a tweetawait TwitterService.Instance.TweetStatusAsync("Hello UWP!");

In addition, the toolkit provides methods that allow developers to animate interface elements with just one line of code:

await element.Rotate(30f).Fade(0.5).Offset(5f).StartAsync();

Further you can find more information about the possibilities of the first release, about how to start development, plans for the future and how to contribute to the development.

UWP Community Toolkit 1.0


The toolbox can be used with any new or existing application written in C # or VB.NET. We are going to support the latest and previous stable releases of the SDK. The toolkit is currently compatible with applications developed since the Windows 10 SDK build 10586 and higher.

The UWP Community Toolkit can be used to create applications for any Windows 10 device, including PC, Mobile, XBOX, IoT, and HoloLens. You can also use this toolkit with an existing desktop application converted to UWP using the Desktop Bridge.
The image in the title of the article shows some of the features that are included in the first release of the toolbox.

We also released the UWP Community Toolkit Sample App.in the Windows Store, which makes it easy to get acquainted with the capabilities of the toolkit before installing it or downloading the SDK. This application will also allow you to easily copy and paste the code that you need in order to start using the toolkit features in your projects.



You can read how to get started using the Getting Started link.

It's quite simple:

1. You need to have Visual Studio 2015 installed with the latest update number 3 and SDK
2. Create a new project or open an existing one
3. Add the UWP Community Toolkit into your project. Open the Nuget package manager and search for the words “Microsoft.Toolkit.UWP”. Install
4. Add a link to the package in XAML

<Pagex:Class="MainPage"xmlns:controls="using:Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.UI.Controls"...

5. and in C #:

using Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp;

6. You can find examples of snippets in the already mentioned application or in the documentation.

In the future we plan to release stable releases through Visual Studio NuGet on a regular basis.
The toolkit is fully open-source, including toolkit source code, sample application source code, and even documentation. Plans for the next version are available here.

  • if you need to send a bug or request for changes or additions of functionality, then use this form
  • if you want to contribute to the development, please start here

We are extremely pleased with the contribution that some community members have already made in the first release. These include Morten Nielsen, Scott Lovegrove, Pedro Lamas, Oren Novotny, James Croft, Diederik Krols, Hermit Dave, Thomas Nigro, Laurent Bugnion, Samuel Blanchard and Rudy Hyun. In the future, we expect continued development with even greater community input.

So please try the UWP Community Toolkit Sample App to find out about the features, then install the package from NuGet and play with it. We hope that the developers will give us good feedback about the usability and features present in the project. There is still enough work in this open source project: we can help improve accessibility and localization, as well as make sure that the features work with all applications.

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