Today there have been a number of announcements in regards to the Windows 10 universal app platform, including the availability of the tools preview:
http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/training-courses/a-developers-guide-to-windows-10-preview
http://dev.windows.com/en-us/whats-new-windows-10-dev-preview
http://microsoft.github.io/windows/
Microsoft have been talking for quite some time about Windows 10 being a single platform that developers can target and have applications run across a multitude of different devices ranging from phone, to slate/tablet, to desktop and even up to Xbox and Surface Hub. This has in part been achievable to a less degree with previous iterations of the framework and as developers we’ve learnt to maximise the reuse along the way. However, for the first time a single executable will run across all devices without recompile. Is this the nirvana that we’ve all been looking for? Here are a couple of things to consider:
– There are still going to be device differences – whilst the core will be common, there are extension sdks for different platforms. Developers will have to query for the existence of contracts before invoking specific extension methods.
– Previously there was a forced break between phone and full screen (ignoring split mode) tablet/desktop, which was convenient for designers. Windows 10 introduces a significant challenge for designers as they have to scale up/down the user experience to handle all manner of sizes and shapes.
– The restricted form factors of the past lead themselves well to a page based navigation, although the page sequence often differed between Windows Phone and Windows. With Windows 10 the page based navigation model doesn’t lend itself well to resizing and adapting to different screen sizes.
The last point is worth expanding on. When an application is resized down to the size of a phone the experience should be similar to a phone application where navigation appears to be page based, including a back button to navigate back between pages. As the application is resized up, initially it would be acceptable to simply scale the size or amount of content being shown. However, at some point there is too much screen real estate available which is either being wasted (voids of empty space) or content is oversized (assuming content continues to scale). Now a different approach is required which will involve presenting more content on the screen. This additional content, which may have been on a different page when on the phone or smaller layout, now needs to be rendered on the same page – this completely breaks the page lifecycle model that most applications are based on, leading to an open question as to how best to handle resizing of applications?