Windows 10 SDK updated with slew of new capabilities for developers

By Dan Thorp-Lancaster
published

XAML islands, Adaptive Cards 1.1, and ink analysis are all included in the latest major update to the Windows 10 SDK.

Microsoft today began rolling out several new features for developers to take advantage of in the Windows 10 SDK. The new capabilities, a number of which were previewed at Build 2018, put more tools in developers' hands, including XAML islands, a new version of Adaptive Cards, Microsoft Graph notifications, and even ink analysis.

Here's a quick rundown of everything that's new:

  • Windows UI Library - Lets developers use the latest Fluent controls in their apps, without being dependent on the OS version their users have installed. Makes modern controls backward-compatible going back to the Windows 10 Anniversary Update (version 1607).
  • UWP XAML hosting API (Preview) - Allows UWP XAML UI elements to be used in apps without repackaging or rewriting them as UWP apps. This includes Windows Forms, WPF, or C/C++ Win32 apps.
  • Adaptive Cards 1.1 - Adds Media Element and Action Icons to Adaptive Cards across Outlook, Cortana, and the Azure Bot Service. Cards can also now be built using a new visual designer.
  • Graph Notifications (Preview) - Taps the Microsoft Graph to provide an "enterprise-compliant, people-centric, and cross-platform notifications platform." Supported across iOS, Android, Windows, and the Graph Explorer in preview.
  • Project Ink Analysis - Gives developers access to the same ink recognition capabilities Microsoft uses in Office.
  • Hyper-V - Android developers on Windows can now run an Android emulator on Hyper-V with the latest Android APIs.
  • Windows Machine Learning API - Adds support for ONNX 1.2.2 models, converting FP32 datatypes in ONNS models to use FP16, improved evaluation times, and support for Windows Server 2019. The API is now the same for Win32 and UWP applications.

All of these new capabilities are rolling out now as part of the latest Windows 10 SDK, available with Visual Studio version 15.9.1 (opens in new tab).

Dan Thorp-Lancaster
Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. 

4 Comments
  • Still waiting on the winrt/c++ bindings... they did something strange by hiding it in the Microsoft visual studio market place somewhere... personally I think c++ standards xx committe killed c++ on windows by taking too long to add in modules...
  • Can someone explain - "Android Emulators" in this context?
  • Being that it's mentioned as a Hyper-V improvement, I'd think that it's an update to Microsoft's virtual machine technology that would allow using an Android virtual machine to develop on.
  • You should also pay attention to some preview APIs which confirm future materialization of folded two-screen devices, take a look at the docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/windows.system.preview.hingestate