api

In today’s post, we’re covering how PC software can leverage the rich functionality of Windows 10. This is valuable background for the upcoming post “Adding UWP Features to Your Existing PC Software with the Desktop Bridge,” which will go into even more detail on the topic in the coming days...

In the last post, we introduced you to a video series from Bob Tabor that teaches the fundamentals of C#. In this post, you’ll learn how to put those new (or re-sharpened) C# skills to use as we explore UWP (Universal Windows Platform) development in the Windows 10 Development for Absolute...

The UWPDesktop NuGet package is here to improve the developer experience with Visual Studio when walking along the Desktop Bridge. The Desktop Bridge allows you to call UWP APIs directly from your WinForms, WPF or VB application. You can use APIs such as Live tiles, notifications, App Services...

In part one of the Windows Bridge for iOS series, we created a simple to-do list app in Xcode and used the iOS bridge to bring it over to Windows 10. In part two of the series, we went on a tour of Visual Studio for iOS developers. In part three, we used the Windows Bridge for iOS to convert an...

Overview Symlinks, or symbolic links, are “virtual” files or folders which reference a physical file or folder located elsewhere, and are an important feature built in to many operating systems, including Linux and Windows. The Windows’ NTFS file system has supported symlinks since Windows...

With the debut of Windows Ink in the Windows Anniversary Update, we introduced simultaneous pen and touch as the dawn of a revolutionary change in interacting with Windows. In our blog post, we discuss how you can use the APIs that you are already familiar with for touch to handle both touch and...

hi I am trying to get PID from the foreground window, but this doesn't work because I am passing the wrong kind of handle to the function. This is under python. How do I fix this? thx! import ctypes import time time.sleep(2) handle = ctypes.windll.user32.GetForegroundWindow() print(handle)...

Back when Node.js was launched, the device landscape was simpler, and using a single JavaScript VM helped provide Node.js the focus to grow rapidly. Today, there is a proliferation in the variety of device types, each with differing resource constraints. In this device context, we believe that...

Using a pen and computer has an interesting history that goes farther back than you’d think. In 1888, the first patent for a “electric stylus device for capturing handwriting” was issued to Elisha Gray for the Telautograph. In fact, pen input was being used 20 years before mouse and GUI input...

Today, we released a new Windows 10 Anniversary SDK Preview to be used in conjunction with Windows 10 Insider Preview (Build 14965 or greater). The Preview SDK is a pre-release and cannot be used in a production environment. Please only install the SDK on your test machine. The Preview SDK Build...

Here’s a little memory test: Do you recall this blog, which posted back in May and promised to soon begin integrating Kinect for Windows into the Universal Windows Platform? Of course you do! Now we are pleased to announce two important developments in the quest to make Kinect functionality...

Assume I have (under 64bit Win 7) a big program installation with one main *.exe file and lots of *.dlls. It seems to me that some but not all of these *.dlls need a registration (by regsvr32) which is done typically at installation time. Some other *.dlls seem to need NO such registration but...

As Windows 10 evolves, we are continuing to build in support for musician-focused technologies. Let’s take a look at MIDI. Windows has had built-in MIDI support going back to the 16-bit days. Since then, most MIDI interfaces have moved to USB and our in-box support has kept pace, with a class...

A few months ago, during Build 2016, we announced the Desktop Bridge, enabling developers to bring their existing desktop apps and games over to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) by converting their app or game with the Desktop App Converter and then enhancing and extending it with UWP...

Recently, we released the Windows Anniversary Update and a new Windows Software Developer Kit (SDK) for Windows 10 containing tools, app templates, platform controls, Windows Runtime APIs, emulators and much more, to help create innovative and compelling Universal Windows apps. Today, we are...

You’ve just boarded your airplane flight, found a free spot in the overhead to store your carry-on and settle in for the journey by pulling out your Windows 10 device to check for status updates on your various social networks. Suddenly, you are aware of a polite flight attendant hovering over...

Continuing in our series on using the Desktop Bridge to bring your existing desktop apps to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), let’s follow up last month’s post on the path from a desktop app to a UWP app with more information on choosing the path forward. First of all, we want to highlight...

A new benchmark will soon be coming to 3DMark as reported in their blog ''Time Spy is a new DirectX 12 benchmark test, coming soon to all Windows editions of 3DMark. With its pure DirectX 12 engine, built from the ground up to support new features like asynchronous compute, explicit...

On Windows desktops, if something went wrong, your first instinct for years may have been to open up the Event Viewer and see if anything red or yellow shows up. Those alerts are saved ETW events, emitted by the system when errors occurred. On other Windows devices though, it’s been a bit harder...

Written by Rinku Sreedhar, Program Manager for Windows Contextual Sensing. We hope you are as excited as we are about the new Contextual Sensing APIs in Windows 10. We introduced multiple new Sensor APIs that will let you enable contextual awareness in your apps. I have received several...