Microsoft Brings New Fluent Design, Visual Studio Features for Developers

While many — including myself — will be disappointed to see the lack of consumer-focused updates at Build 2018, this show is, of course, a developer conference. And Microsoft is showing off a bunch of developer-oriented updates to Azure, and its developer products and tools at Build 2018.

First things first: Microsoft is changing the revenue share policy for its store. App developers will now get up to 95% share of their revenue, giving only 5% to Microsoft — which is much better than what developers receive at the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. The updated revenue share policy doesn’t apply to games for obvious reasons, however.

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For Windows 10 developers, Microsoft is introducing the UWP XAML Islands at Build 2018. With UWP XAML Islands, developers will be able to take advantage of Fluent Design and integrate Microsoft’s new design language, introduced at last year’s Build, into their apps — regardless of which UI stack they are using. This means that apps built on Windows Forms, WPF, or native Win32 will be able to take advantage of the new Fluent Design APIs using UWP XAML Islands.

For Visual Studio users, Microsoft is launching Live Share in preview today. The company first announced this feature, which allows for real-time code collaboration, late last year. Think of it as a modern way of doing pair programming, as it lets developers edit and debug code directly on Visual Studio 2017 and Visual Studio Code without needing to use any additional software or video-calling software. Developers will also be able to debug code on the fly using Live Share.

Microsoft is also bringing an AI-powered feature to Visual Studio as a preview today. The new feature, IntelliCode, uses AI to provide intelligent suggestions to improve code quality and help developers save time.

Microsoft is also showcasing other new features for developers. The company is launching new APIs for Microsoft Teams, support for Adaptive Cards on Teams and Outlook, support for Power BI Visualizations within Excel, .NET Code 3.0, the Windows Machine Learning platform, and much more.

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  • jimchamplin

    Premium Member
    07 May, 2018 - 11:41 am

    <p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">This means that apps built on Windows Forms, WPF, or native Win32 will be able to take advantage of the new Fluent Design APIs using UWP XAML Islands."</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The ability for everything running in Windows 10 to look consistently like Windows 10? </span><em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">This is only THREE YEARS LATE!</em></p>

    • Martin Pelletier

      Premium Member
      07 May, 2018 - 1:12 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#272450"><em>In reply to jimchamplin:</em></a></blockquote><p>And I am pretty sure that it still not feature complete. </p>

  • Tom Webb

    07 May, 2018 - 12:49 pm

    <p>"The updated revenue share policy doesn’t apply to games for obvious reasons, however."</p><p><br></p><p>What is the "obvious" reason? Wouldn't offering better terms help against Steam? <img src=""></p>

    • Chris Payne

      07 May, 2018 - 1:25 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#272475"><em>In reply to Harpocrates:</em></a></blockquote><p>I was just going to ask the same question.</p>

    • Jay

      07 May, 2018 - 2:32 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#272475"><em>In reply to Harpocrates:</em></a></blockquote><p>Probably means that Microsoft is too stupid to do the obvious</p>

    • rameshthanikodi

      07 May, 2018 - 4:24 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#272475"><em>In reply to Harpocrates:</em></a></blockquote><p>Probably because of the Store having parity with the games store on the Xbox which mirrors the policies in place across the console market. The videogame industry has happily settled on cutting 30% from game publishers, and no one is desperate to go lower, even if for Microsoft that would mean sacrificing the Store on Windows as a place to buy games so that they can keep their Xbox margins.</p><p><br></p><p>It is sort of an own goal but yeah. </p>

  • gregsedwards

    Premium Member
    07 May, 2018 - 2:11 pm

    <p>On the upside, FIFA '19 will do your taxes. #ItsNotAGame</p>

  • RamblingGeek

    07 May, 2018 - 2:46 pm

    <p>Why haven't the brought out a Fluent Design BootStrap? It's needed so all apps don't look like from google with Material Design. :-(</p>

  • rameshthanikodi

    07 May, 2018 - 3:45 pm

    <p>This is great! One of the biggest roadblocks to developers not being able to make their apps look modern was because they were forced to use the theming engine from Windows XP, adopting Aero in Vista/7 was full of roadblocks unless they used WPF.</p>

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