Windows 10: Announcing Windows Community Toolkit version 6.1

Brink · Jun 15, 2020

We are thrilled to announce today the next update to the Windows Community Toolkit, version 6.1. This release was made possible with help and contributions from across our developer community. While a âminorâ release, it is jam-packed with new controls, helpers, and improvements to the whole toolkit suite!

See more details on these new features below.

Introducing the TokenizingTextBox

It may look like an AutoSuggestBox at first, but it allows the user to choose more than one option. Once the user has selected one, it âtokenizesâ it and provides them a clear indication of their selections which can be manipulated easily afterwards. Unparsed entries can also remain as text, it is great for a variety of scenarios including picking contacts and categorizing items.

This has been one of our more highly requested controls for the Toolkit, and it has been a challenge to put together! But we are happy to bring it to you in this release! Please check out the docs here, and let us know what you build with it!

Toast Notification Helpers for .NET Core 3 â Michael Dietrich

The Windows Notification team was able to leverage a community solution by Michael Dietrich to allow our great Toast Notification Helpers to now work on .NET Core 3 for all your WPF and WinForms applications!

State Triggers â Morten Nielsen

Morten Nielsen, a longtime contributor to the community toolkit, has moved their State Trigger collection over to the Toolkit! Now all your widely used helpers, converters, and triggers can be found in one convenient location! Find out more in the documentation here.

ItemsRepeater Layouts â Shawn Kendrot

The WrapPanel and StaggeredPanel have been toolkit staples for a while now; however, they do not help with virtualized scenarios with thousands of items, until today! Shawn Kendrot has implemented versions of both panels as Layouts for ItemsRepeater, WrapLayout and StaggeredLayout, which can be found in a new package: Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.UI.Controls.Layout.

More .NET Standard Libraries â Sergio Pedri

It is with great pleasure that we are adding two new .NET Standard libraries to the toolkit which can be leveraged by .NET developers building all kinds of applications and solutions.

The first is a whole new package Toolkit.HighPerformance, which contains a set of APIs and helpers designed for performance critical applications where every instruction call counts. Be sure to read all the docs and guidelines before use!

The second is the âGuardâ API included in the Toolkit package and is a set of helper APIs for method parameter validation. It turns this traditional mess:

Code:

public static void SampleMethod(int[] array, int index, Span<int> span, string text)
{
if (array is null)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(array), "The array must not be null");
}

if (array.Length >= 10)
{
throw new ArgumentException($"The array must have less than 10 items, had a size of {array.Length}", nameof(array));
}

if (index < 0 || index >= array.Length)
{
throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException(nameof(index), $"The index must be in the [0, {array.Length}) range, was {index}");
}

if (span.Length < array.Length)
{
throw new ArgumentException($"The target span is shorter than the input array, had a length of {span.Length}", nameof(span));
}

if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(text))
{
throw new ArgumentException("The input text can't be null or empty", nameof(text));
}

// â¦
}
Click to expand...

Into this compact and readable Guard:

Code:

public static void SampleMethod(int[] array, int index, Span<int> span, string text)
{
Guard.IsNotNull(array, nameof(array));
Guard.HasSizeGreaterThanOrEqualTo(array, 10, nameof(array));
Guard.IsInRangeFor(index, array, nameof(index));
Guard.HasSizeLessThanOrEqualTo(array, span, nameof(span));
Guard.IsNotNullOrEmpty(text, nameof(text));

// â¦
}
Click to expand...

It should feel at home for anyone who has done unit testing checks before. Now, you can just as easily validate your API parameters! There are no more excuses not to now!

Improved Brushes â Sergio Pedri

Last release, we consolidated our composition brushes to a new Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.UI.Media package. This release, thanks again to Sergio, we have a big update to this package consolidating the backend effects to a new PipelineBrush which can composite various Brush effects in XAML! It also adds a new customizable AcrylicBrush and a simple to use TilesBrush (as seen above)!

Lottie-Windows Improvements

Lottie-Windows, a library for rendering Adobe After Effects animations, has improved parsing performance by ~50% for this release. It has also added a new theme property binding feature, which enables scenarios like synchronizing colors in a Lottie file to Windows theme colors.

Even More!

Thereâs a ton of fixes, other helpers, and improvements across the board from our community this release, so be sure to visit our release notes for all the details!

WinUI 3 Preview 1 & Windows Community Toolkit

If you somehow missed the news at //Build last week, we have a preview of the toolkit which works on the latest WinUI 3 Preview 1 release for Desktop apps! This version of the toolkit works for Desktop mode only as part of the focus of the new WinUI Preview (and running on the .NET 5 preview). Find out more details on how to try this out here.

Get started today

As a reminder, you can get started by following our docs.microsoft.com tutorial, or preview the latest features by installing the Windows Community Toolkit Sample App from the Microsoft Store (it links to each doc page too). If you would like to contribute, please join us on GitHub! To follow the conversation on Twitter, use the #WindowsCommunityToolkit hashtag.

Happy coding!
Click to expand...

Source: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdev...-toolkit-v6-1/

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Brink · Jun 15, 2020

Announcing UWP Community Toolkit 1.1

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Today we are releasing the first update to the UWP Community Toolkit. To see the updates, first:

Get started with UWP Community Toolkit 1.1

Install the UWP Community Toolkit Sample App directly from the Windows Store

Read the documentation

In under a month since the first release, we are humbled by the positive feedback we have received so far and are excited to see all the contributions the community has made, including:

39 community contributors

188 accepted pull requests

173 issues closed

678 stars

159 forks

Thanks to all the contributors that were involved with this release!

Here’s a summary of what’s new in V1.1:

.NET Foundation. We are excited to announce that the UWP Community Toolkit has joined the .NET Foundation, a vibrant community of open-sourced projects focused on the future of the .NET ecosystem.

Updates and new features. The focus of this release is to improve the quality of the toolkit by addressing feedback we received through GitHub and the Store Sample App. Full list available in the Release Notes, including:

Services: added LinkedIn service (i.e. read user profile and share activity), Microsoft Graph service (i.e. send and read emails from UWP via Office 365 or explore Azure Active Directory graph) and updates to the Facebook and Bing services

Controls: added Blade, GridSplitter and DropShadowPanel controls

Animations: new FadeHeaderBehavior

Sample app. The UWP Community Toolkit Sample App has been updated to include the new features of this release. The Sample App is the best way to preview the features of the toolkit.

Documentation. As the project joins the .NET Foundation, we moved the documentation to a new location, directly connected to GitHub.

If you want to use it in your projects, visit the Getting Started page. If you are already using the toolkit, we recommend updating to the latest release.

You can find the roadmap of next release here.

If you have any feedback or are interested in contributing, see you on GitHub!

Download Visual Studio to get started!
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Source: Announcing UWP Community Toolkit 1.1 | Building Apps for Windows

Brink · Jun 15, 2020

Announcing UWP Community Toolkit 1.5

Today marks the sixth release of the UWP Community Toolkit – all packages are updated to version 1.5. Thanks to the UWP developer community, the UWP Community Toolkit has seen great improvements and stability to the existing controls and services. The community partnership has led to several new additions to this release.

To highlight a few of the new additions, the UWP Community Toolkit now includes:

Menu: A classic control used by traditional desktop applications, adapted for the Universal Windows Platform. As requested by the community on UserVoice, the Menu allows the developer to provide a hierarchical list of menus and submenus that support any input modality and can adapt to the screen size to provide a natural and fluid interaction.

OrbitView: A new ItemsControl that arranges elements around a center element and provides flexibility for size and distance for each element, as well as the ability to show orbits or anchors for each item.

RadialProgressBar: A XAML Control that displays a value within a range using a circular sector that grows clockwise until it becomes a full ring. A fantastic variation of the ProgressBar.

RoundImageEx: Similar to the ImageEx control, the RoundImageEx control downloads and locally caches images asynchronously while showing loading indicators. In addition, the RoundImageEx allows images to be clipped as circles.

ExpressionBuilder: A type-safe way to build powerful composition ExpressionAnimation.

BluetoothLEHelper: The BluetoothLEHelper class provides functionality to easily enumerate, connect to and interact with Bluetooth LE Peripherals.

For a complete overview of what’s new in version 1.5, please read our release notes on GitHub.

The release of Windows 10 Creators Update (build 10.0.15063) has enabled several new APIs that make it possible to improve several controls used in apps targeting the latest update. Therefore, several packages are now targeting the Windows 10 Creators Update and can take advantage of these new APIs. We encourage all developers using the toolkit to update their apps to the latest version of the UWP Community Toolkit.

As a reminder, the UWP Community Toolkit can be used in any UWP app across PC, Xbox One, mobile, HoloLens and Surface Hub devices. You can get started by following this tutorial, or preview the latest features by installing the UWP Community Toolkit Sample App from the Windows Store.

If you would like to contribute, please join us on GitHub!
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Source: Announcing UWP Community Toolkit 1.5 - Building Apps for Windows

Brink · Jun 15, 2020

The UWP Community Toolkit v2.1

We are extremely excited to announce the latest update to the UWP Community Toolkit, version 2.1!

This update builds on top of the previous version and continues to align the toolkit closer to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update SDK. Thanks to the continued support and help of the community, all packages have been updated to target the Fall Creators Update, several controls, helpers, and extensions have been added or updated, and the documentation and design time experience have been greatly improved.

Below is a quick list of few of the major updates in this release. Head over to the release notes for a complete overview of what’s new in 2.1.
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Read more: The UWP Community Toolkit v2.1 - Building Apps for Windows

Windows 10: Announcing Windows Community Toolkit version 6.1

Announcing Windows Community Toolkit version 6.1

Announcing Windows Community Toolkit version 6.1

Announcing Windows Community Toolkit version 6.1

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