With Fluent Design in tow, Microsoft’s UWP Toolkit graduates to version 2.0

Despite outward appearances, Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform development marches on and is evolving its UWP Community Toolkit to version 2.0.

There have been seven releases since the UWP Community Toolkit was first introduced exactly one year ago and version 2.0 is the first major and largest update to date. The developer community has worked enthusiastically to build something that is used by thousands of developers every month. Today, there are over 100 contributors, and developers have downloaded the packages over 250,000 times. This would not be possible without the strength of the community – Thank You!

What these means for developers, is that UWP Community Toolkit brings some long awaited API’s for Microsoft’s Fluent Design System and UI. Developers using UWP Community Toolkit will now be able to play and familiarize themselves with the five elements that make up Fluent Design such as light, depth, material, motion, and scale to create beautifully functioning apps and services.

Others developer requested features include:

• Added InAppNotification control – a control to show local notifications in app
• Added TextToolbar control – text editing control that enables easy rich text and Markdown formatting
• Updated Expander to support all orientations and added LayoutTranformControl from the WinRT XAML Toolkit
• LayoutTranformControl from the WinRT XAML Toolkit
• Updated Menu to support underline characters, orientation, and many other improvements

For those who favor function over form, the UWP Community Toolkit Sample now envelops XAML development directly into the sample app for near instantaneous feedback and testing.

Another new feature is the expansion of cross platform development that now includes two new packages to accommodate future API releases. Microsoft.Toolkit and Microsoft.Toolkit.Services will support more cross platform APIs as they are built with .NET standards and will support any platform with .NET Standard 1.4 and newer.

There are a handful of other tweaks that are coming with UWP Community Toolkit version 2.0 and to read the full release notes please visit the Windows Blogs here.