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Desktop Apps Make Their Way Into the Windows Store (arstechnica.com)
With Windows 8, Microsoft introduced Windows Store, which consisted of "Metro / Modern UI" apps which worked best on touch capable devices. Since the release of Windows 8, many users complained that they wanted traditional apps -- the applications they had grown accustomed to -- to be included in Windows Store. This would have come in handy to especially Windows RT users, who couldn't easily get traditional applications installed on their devices. Well, guess, what, that's changing now. Though only for Windows 10 users who have gotten the Anniversary Update -- and guess what, many haven't and might not for another month and a half. At any rate, ArsTechnica elaborates: Until now, applications built for and sold through the Windows Store in Windows 10 have been built for the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), the common set of APIs that spans Windows 10 across all the many devices it supports. This has left one major category of application, the traditional desktop application built using the Win32 API, behind. Announced at Build 2015, codename Project Centennial -- now officially titled the Desktop App Converter -- is Microsoft's solution to this problem. It allows developers to repackage existing Win32 applications with few or no changes and sell them through the store. Applications packaged this way aren't subject to all the sandbox restrictions that UWP applications are, ensuring that most will work unmodified. But they are also given the same kind of clean installation, upgrading, and uninstallation that we've all come to expect from Store-delivered software. Centennial is designed to provide not just a way of bringing Win32 apps into the store; it also provides a transition path so that developers can add UWP-based functionality to their old applications on a piecemeal basis. Evernote, one of the launch applications, uses UWP APIs to include support for Live Tiles and Windows' notification system. In this way, developers can create applications that work better on Windows 10 but without having to rewrite them entirely for Windows 10.
The real win would be to replace the Windows registry with file-system based configuration.
Strike that... I won't look in the Windows Store at all.
Is this submission by app appers guy, because it reads like one.
Nobody uses the Windows Store because nobody wants to give Microsoft 30% of their revenue. Until this is changed, the Windows Store will be full of tumbleweeds and not applications.
sandbox restrictions went to far so they have to do this to save the store.
A few I'd like to see:
Win Dir Stat or Tree Size
VLC
PeaZip or 7Zip
Audacity
Chrome
FireFox
Pale Moon
Opera or whatever that one browser from that Opera guy is called
A file hash calculator with right-click menu extension built in
SnagIt, GreenShot
A FOSS Bit Torrent client
Various NirSoft Utilities
These people need to be MADE to use Pokemon Go on their gaming rig.
I'll watch, thanks. Or not.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I won't. But maybe I won't have a choice at some point.
Whoa whoa whoa, let's not let facts rain on the OPs parade. I'm sure the OP just thought that Centennial also comes with a built-in cross-compiler for ARM. ;)
This could prove to be quite an amusing turn of events. App stores require isolation to protect users from seedy nature of majority of apps available for free or purchase from the store. Without isolation these platforms would fall apart.
Providing an avenue that allows apps to run as normal software would have provided for some very interesting headlines had anyone actually used Microsoft's store.. Since nobody cares it is a moot point yet still quite interesting Microsoft is crazy enough to even contemplate such madness.
It hasn't been a cake-walk converting Zoom Player (http://zoomplayer.com) to the AppX model.
The 'Desktop Bridge' conversion tool breaks the Executable/AppData folder model introduced in Windows Vista and is completely incompatible with the Windows XP admin access model.
By this I mean that the app can't write any file to the installation folder.
And any files installed to the local AppData folder by the Win32 installer are non-accessible after the conversion to AppX (they are installed in a read-only folder where no API can be used to find the folder's path).
The work-around is to install everything to a single folder and then copy the required files to the local AppData folder on the initial run.
There are other issues dealing with the App's icon in various places, it seems they changed the model and it's impossible (as far as I can tell and as far as my questions get non-answers on the microsoft UWP forum) to present the same icon as a desktop app on the start menu, task bar and elsewhere.
I also found that some 3rd party components (DirectShow filters) don't always work in the virtualized environment, but it's something I'm trying to resolve with the authors.
And finally, there is no clear process to get a store listing for the App.
We filled in the form, got no reply that it was even received, later follow-ups on the MS forum resulting in this:
https://social.msdn.microsoft....
Hopefully they will streamline the process soon.
Zoom Player Lead Dev.
Well making a Metro UI App in .NET isn't just 1 for 1 compatible with their older apps.
That is why .NET sucked. It has failed in the purpose of its design of bytecode compiling. It isn't portable, it isn't portable across 32bit and 64 system, it isn't portable across different screen resolutions, and processors.
I tried doing some metro design a while back... And it limited way too much stuff.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Your app writes to the install directory for your app seems like a dumb thing to do. Even more so if each app is per user. So each per user app as data in both the app folder and some user home folder.
Please don't put any apps on the Windows store. That will only make Microsoft more invested in the idea that the store should be the ONLY way to get apps on Windows. MS big dream is to make that happen and have a 30% cut off all software sales.
Don't facilitate that by putting anything on their store.. just don't.
Supposedly Microsoft is also making UWP apps a bit less of a pain in the ass, and will be allowing 3rd party installations/download/management (IE- Steam) easily.
UWP has come a long way since windows 8 but it's still got a bit of work left. The application model is better for end users. Applications are jailed and run entirely in usermode. You don't need root(administrative privilages) to install them.
Still, UWP is only appropriate for applications that are self contained and live in one window (Really bad design choice there MS) - So that means productvity applications are a no go.
I've played two UWP games - The gears of War remake and the Halo 5 Forge.. They eat a TON of memory (Sandboxing a complex game means a lot of redundant memory usage) and there are some performance issues, but it's getting there. One thing I noticed, though, was you can alt-tab out of UWP games instantly. No video mode switch. No weird issues. Just seamless and fast.
Well, you're right, and I guess the OP was just being wishful. But then again, what big advantage is there in loading X86 WIN32 apps via the app store, when an X86 desktop system can load them easily already? If it's simply for the sake of the distribution mechanism (and if MS is going to take a cut), I can't imagine too many wanting to take advantage.
But of course, since RT only supported the app store, and didn't provide a full WIN32 subsystem (or hid it - and reserved it for Office only), then it would be a big deal indeed if MS were opening up WIN32 (and, yes, providing a cross-compiler) to work on ARM.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Games used to have there own editor apps and now more have build in ones + some 3rd part or ext modding tools.
But with an store only system that can die / dev's will have to make it all DLC.
I have a local login for my Windows 10 machine
I remembered that I actually still have a subscription to the MLB tv app. Ok I thought, I guess I should use the app store thing which required logging into my Windows account, ok, no problem.
Had to reboot for some patch install a few days later... long story short they change your login profile from local to Windows without telling you
I was able to set it back up but I absolutely do not trust the Windows store at all now, that kind of garbage is NOT acceptable.
They would have an app store doing all the updating and marketing previously unknown programs.
Whatever happened to CoolEdit ?
I thought that died with metro, and the icon in win10 was just for people that needed to re-download past purchasing mistakes.
Those traditional desktop applications are all x86 assemblies. Can't run them on an ARM operating system
True, but not because of the ISA difference. Many developers of Windows desktop applications were willing to recompile them for ARM, just as Mac apps had been recompiled for PowerPC and then for Intel. Microsoft wouldn't let them, and it enforced this through a policy of not allowing any code to execute on the device unless signed by Microsoft, as if it were a g**d*** Xbox.
Imagine that, ANOTHER feature Linux had 20 years ago that Windows is only now getting.
Don't our Linux package managers actually have applications and useful stuff in them?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Adobe bought Cool Edit Pro, renamed it Audition, and put it behind a $240/year Creative Cloud subscription (source).
I don't think being able to sell them through the store would be likely to convince any developers to go to the trouble of reworking and recompiling for Arm
I disagree. There are plenty of Android NDK apps that have both ARM and Atom (x86) versions. And do you already forget the transition of macOS from 68K to PowerPC to Intel?
The MacOS that went from 68k to PPC was not the same OS that went from PPC to Intel. The one that went from 68k to PPC was System 7.x, while OS-X was parallelly developed on PPC and x86.
Steam
I'm pretty sure there was an entire win 32 subsystem in there based on the applications available. They have notepad, calculator, remote desktop, character map, ms paint, and a bunch of other system tools like regedit and event viewer that I can't really see them bothering to port unless they could just recompile them. Also, I seem to remember somebody jail breaking an early version and getting a few basic open source programs like putty and scummvm running. I think they really missed the boad by now allowing people to run recompiled desktop applications.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Who cares if they are metro or classic windowed applications? The only apps I can ascertain that the Windows 10 store sells are various poker, or video lottery terminal applications.... and a Facebook app for people who haven't yet determined the purpose of a web browser. How many Windows users are gambling addicts, and how many of those people owe it all to Microsoft's online store?
Yes, i remember reading how people 'jailbroke' the Surface, enabling ARM binaries to run. Windows RT no longer is sold but, Continuum.
If Visual Studio provides a checkbox on Visual Studio to compile a binary for ARMv8 then the utility of the Continuum desktop rises. And i'm thinking cross platform software that is already largely ARM-clean by virtue of running on rPi - Geany, pidgin.
But with the death of Lumia for some overpriced vapourware 'surface phone', the horse has probably bolted already. Relaunch the platform with a low-end $150 WP10 Continuum phone and it may have a chance (save the fancy camera, humongous battery and dazzling 5.7" screen for the high end)
The desktop app converter requires native containers support in Windows which is only available on those platforms.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Like its terrible wifi performance, its shitty printer subsystem, the fact that most updates revert to "Defaults" which always seem to favour microsoft, and the general terrible shit that windows 10 does, maybe they could package Windows 7 in a UWP!!!