Summary

We have covered a lot of the history of Windows application development in this chapter. We learned about the origins of UWP and its roots in Windows 8 apps, and learned of the benefits of XAML when building Windows UIs. We had a taste of what some simple WinUI app code and UIs look like. Finally, we examined the recent history of WinUI versions and how the new version 3.0 is a complete replacement for the UWP UI libraries and a viable option for WPF developers going forward.

This will give you a good foundation of what's to come as we start building an app with WinUI in the chapters ahead. In the next chapter, you will set up your development environment, learn about the app project that we will create throughout the book, and create your first WinUI 3.0 project. When we get to Chapter 3, MVVM for Maintainability and Testability, we will refactor the app to use the MVVM pattern. This will set us up with a solid, maintainable design as we later add to and extend the app throughout the rest of the book.