Windows 10: Empowering developers to dream again

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Windows 10 will empower people to do some amazing things with a new version of Cortana for the PC, a new web browsing experience (“Project Spartan”), a true Xbox quality gaming experience on Windows, new holographic and group computing devices, and of course a new set of universal apps – People & Messaging, Photo, Video, Music and Maps – that begin to showcase a few of the new developer platform capabilities.

Now what does all of this mean for you, our Windows developers?

Driving scale through reach across device type. We are working to make Windows 10 a unified, developer platform for ALL of our devices so you can reach the greatest number of customers with your work across phones, tablets, PCs, Xbox, IoT devices and the new Surface Hub and HoloLens opportunities

Delivering unique experiences. With Windows 10, developers will be able to build on top of our investments in Cortana and speech recognition, touch, audio, video and holograms to extend their app experiences in ways they used to only dream about but are now possible on Windows 10.

Maximizing developer investments. We remain committed to helping you get the most out of your investments in training, tools, and code to continue and target our new offerings. We also recognize that many of you are looking for more ways to target a range of platforms with the same basic code or toolset with cross platform technologies.

Driving scale

Everyone wants a broader customer base and we believe Windows 10 will continue to increase customer adoption. Another closely related problem facing software developers today is the proliferation of device types and the amount of work it takes to consistently deliver compelling experiences across them all. Windows 10 addresses these fragmentation challenges.

We’re also doing the work necessary to help make sure that apps and games look great across a full range of devices, display surfaces and input models. The Windows 10 platform will build upon the universal Windows app framework released with Windows 8.1 to provide developers the tools to deliver new app experiences across devices with a minimum amount of additional work.

Delivering unique experiences

Windows 10 introduces several new features that open up new avenues for developer innovation. With Windows 10 and HoloLens developers will have access to a platform that bridges the digital and physical world changing the way people interact with devices and applications.  Many of you already tap into Cortana on phones. Soon, you’ll be able to take advantage of Cortana with new capabilities on a wider variety of Windows 10 devices.

We’ve also begun to share more about a new web experience for Windows 10 dubbed “Project Spartan,” which gives people new and better ways to engage the content they love across devices. Spartan introduces a new rendering engine designed for interoperability with the modern web.

Maximizing your investments

Microsoft has a long history of protecting the investments of developers. For every release we dedicate an enormous number of resources to make sure the vast majority of existing applications continue to run as expected.

But protecting investments is about more than just ensuring that existing code continues to run; it’s also about safeguarding the skills you’ve spent years perfecting continue to serve you well in building solutions for the Windows 10 platform. With Windows 10 you’ll continue to build apps with the language of your choice in Visual Studio and enjoy a variety of cloud services through Azure, all of which can be developed and deployed in Visual Studio using the tools, languages and frameworks with which you are familiar.

Maximizing investments also speaks to our promise to support cross platform solutions. We know that developers have made investments in order to more easily target multiple platforms and device types. Accordingly, we’ve taken steps to make it easier than ever for developers working across platforms to also bring their solutions to Windows.

What’s next?

We’re more committed than ever to making sure that you can leverage your work to reach more customers, regardless of where they are, what device type they’re on, or what operating system they’re running. The best way to start preparing for Windows 10 is to start building universal Windows apps today for Windows 8.1.

Here are some great resources to get started:

Official Documentation

Comprehensive Online Training