Windows Desktop Applications | Windows 10 Store Applications & WPF

Overview

Windows 10 is a powerful platform for creating rich media and line of business applications (usually powered by XAML). Internal applications with rich data & interactivity have been at the core of the modern business for many years. SSW has been creating desktop applications on the Windows platform for over 15 years and have a wealth of experience to draw on. Windows 10 allows desktop applications to be created in 2 main technologies: Windows 10 store applications, and the more traditional WPF for classic styled applications.

Benefits

• Customised rich desktop applications to power your business
• Integration with your backend systems & databases
• Processing can done locally using the processing power of the PC

Windows 10 Store Applications

Windows 10 brings with it the ability to create "Touch first" applications that work well on both desktop and tablets. These applications allow a business to mobilise their workforce, and to interact with their data in new ways both in the office, and away from their desk when visiting a customer.

Windows 10 store applications can be built for your own internal use, or can be created as a consumer application for your customers to interact with you.

SSW provides a complete support to Windows 10, starting with setting up the development environment for your first application; We also cover the user interface design, touch-driven design elements, debug and deployment of your application.

WPF

This proven technology has been around many years and is the primary way desktop applications are developed on Windows. Most "Traditional" business desktop applications are written in WPF. There is a rich ecosystem of controls, charts and libraries that can be used to enhance the development of WPF applications.

WPF applications are developed primarily for someone sitting at a desk where the main concern is efficient multitasking between applications.

Figure: WPF aims to unify a number of common user interface elements, such as 2D/3D rendering, fixed and adaptive documents, typography, vector graphics, runtime animation, and pre-rendered media

Figure: SSW Code Auditor Windows Application was designed and developed by SSW. Due to the heavy processing of local files, a desktop application was the best choice.

Universal Apps & Xamarin

Microsoft now supports a new development framework called "Universal apps" which allows an application to be created that targets Windows 10 desktops, tablets and Windows Phone 8 devices.

Universal Apps are a way of creating a Visual Studio project that can share assets between a Windows Phone & Windows Store application. It also lets you create an app that you can purchase on one device (Windows tablet), and install on another (Win Phone).

Combined with Univeral apps, Xamarin can also be used in conjunction to share a code base across multiple platforms. SSW uses this technology when working with clients as it brings the best combination of development speed & flexibility. Rather than rebuilding 3 separate apps in each platforms SDK (iOS, Android, Windows), Xamarin can be used to share the core business logic across all the applications, significantly reducing the work required to release an app on multiple platforms.

More details can be found on our Mobile Application Development page.

Figure: Xamarin apps share code across all platforms

Azure

Windows Azure provides on-demand infrastructure that scales and adapts to your changing business needs. Whether you are creating new applications or running existing applications we provide the best price-performance and end-to-end support.

Read more about our Azure Solutions.

SQL Server

SQL Server is Microsoft enterprise level database platform. We use it as the preferred back-end database for all windows applications we develop. This ensures the best level of availability, security and scalability of your application.

Read more about our Database Solutions.