Windows 10 TwoPaneView splits apps on two screens

We already reported that the Surface Phone is probably canceled at it won’t get to see daylight after all, at least not by the end of this year. Meanwhile, more and more tech companies have been announcing their plans to launch book-like laptops with a second display replacing the keyboard. This trend is sustained by the users’ excitement for something new and aims to increase average selling prices as well.

Microsoft releases APIs for the hardware feature

Microsoft has been releasing APIs in order to accommodate the hardware feature. One example is UWP TwoPaneView which allows developers to create views of their very own UWP apps which can either be placed side by side or stacked.

A dummy app based on the new API was first created by developer Zhyowen Cui. The views would be split over the two screens in a dual pane device.

There are other APIs as well which allow developers know the state of the hinge regardless if it is flat, convex, tent-like, concave or laptop-like. This way, they would be able to have their apps respond accordingly.

Apps can take advantage of this new feature

If tech giants such as Lenovo, Asus and more manage to sell a large enough number of such laptops with dual screens, developers would definitely be successful in creating apps that would take advantage of this hardware feature. Needless to say, even regular Windows tablets would be able to benefit from the presentation of some apps on such side-by-side panels. In other words, these APIs will definitely turn out very useful in the future.

Besides the uncertainty floating around the Surface Phone, such a book-like UI and the Andromeda OS are some nice thoughts to hang on to for the moment. We’ll just have to wait and see which of them materialize eventually.

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