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I guess the announcement of Windows 10 came as a surprise because there’s an exponential growth of theories on why it is called Windows 10 and not Windows 9. I personally don’t care about the numbering as long as Microsoft doesn’t introduce Windows 9 later on. In the meantime, let’s see what Windows 10 offers for end-users and developers. First, using live tiles people will be able to customize the new/old Start menu and have a personal blend of classic and universal apps. Also the criticism about the nature of switching between classic and metro mode made Microsoft rethink the whole keyboard and mouse interaction.

Windows 10 is exciting for developers as well. With Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 Microsoft unequivocally proved, through an elaborate social experiment among developers, that supporting two development stacks for one and the same application is not the way to go. Developers should be able to target all Windows device of all form factors with a single universal application. With the announcement of the new Windows Runtime on //build 2014 you can now use Universal Windows apps to target both Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 devices. Shortly after //build we introduced UI for Windows Universal - a set of tools for creating Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 apps faster and easier.

Check out our BETA release here.

The Universal Windows apps approach is not new to developers. Android already provides a pretty convenient way of targeting various devices by separating application layout in different folders. The advantage of Windows developers is with the emerging cross-platform native tools. Windows 8 branched to XAML and HTML allowing developers to create pure native Windows Store apps using either C# or JavaScript. If you’re a developer who knows C# or JavaScript you can take advantage of cross-platform tools such as Xamarin and NativeScript and create one app that targets the three major mobile platforms - Android, iOS and Windows. We’re in the process of creating cross-platform wrappers for our native mobile tools. Soon Xamarin and NativeScript developers will be able to use UI for Android, UI for iOS and UI for Windows Universal target all three mobile platforms using either C# or JavaScript.

We think it’s an exciting time for Windows. You can take a look at the Insiders page and get your hands on a preview of the new OS: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-coming-soon


About the Author

Kiril Stanoev

Hi, I'm Kiril and I'm the Product Manager of Telerik UI for Android, Windows Universal and Windows Phone. Feel free to ping me on +KirilStanoev or @KirilStanoev

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