As a true demonstration of the capabilities of the Uno Platform the Nuget Package Explorer (source on GitHub / Microsoft Store) is now available at https://nuget.info. For more information read the announcement.
One thing that’s not immediately obvious is that https://nuget.info is in fact a PWA. In Edge (and Chrome) you should see an icon to the right of the address bar that allows you to Install the NuGet Package Explorer (NPE).
Once installed, you can pin NPE to either, or both, the start menu or the taskbar for easy access.
One thing that’s becoming evident is that PWAs are very much going to be part of the future of all platforms, mobile and desktop alike. If you’re building an app today, you need to make sure that whatever technology you’re building with is able to deliver a web version that’s capable of running as a PWA.
I’ve provided instructions in a previous post on how to adapt an Uno application so that it can be installed as a PWA. This means you can build using the full capabilities of Visual Studio, starting with either an UWP or a WinUI application, and then generate a web application that runs as a PWA with almost no additional effort.
If you want to use the NPE to open packages that you’ve downloaded, or created locally, you probably still want to install the NPE from the Microsoft Store. However, there’s hope that further down the line PWAs will be able to support file extension (see this proposal).
Update: Just to be clear, the WASM/PWA version of NPE can be used to open local packages but because you can’t associate a file extension with a PWA currently, you won’t be able to simply double-click on the file. Instead you can select a local package using the File, Open, menu item.