What you need to know
- Microsoft shipped the first update to the Surface Duo SDK preview yesterday.
- The update focuses on screen sizes and the DisplayMask API.
- The update also changes the Surface Duo Image Build Flavor to a USER build.
This update doesn't include any major features that will move the needle for average users, but that's not the point of this SDK preview. These changes help developers build and optimize apps for dual-screen experiences. For example, this update reduces inconsistencies on how activity, window, and display metrics are returned to apps and games. Now, apps and games receive the appropriate size. Specifically, single-screen apps will receive information for a single display, and dual-screen apps will receive metrics related to both displays and the display mask.
The update changes and improves how display metrics are reported in regard to the display mask. Microsoft explains this change well in the blog post,
Display Mask has been updated to return a bounding rectangle relative to the display metrics based on the app context. When running on a single screen the DisplayMask will now return an empty list it will not intersect with the window. When running on both screens, the display mask bounding rectangle shall identify the area under the hardware hinge in relation to the app window.
You can read more about the update's changes, including the behind the scenes changes in Microsoft's blog post.
