Windows Bridge for iOS Updates

This week Microsoft announced new features for their Windows Bridge for iOS and a new collection of code samples and open source sample apps to help developers learn how to use the bridge and bring their iOS apps over to the Windows Store.

Microsoft first announced the Windows Bridge for iOS at BUILD 2015 last year as a means to encourage iOS developers to port, with a minimal amount of work and changes, their apps over to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps for the Windows Store. All of this is accomplished while using iOS APIs and their Objective-C code that already exists.

Since then we have seen several apps that have used this tool to publish on Windows 10 and now Microsoft is pushing out several new features that will help that process be even easier.

Here are the key update highlights:

CoreFoundation

The iOS bridge team has merged the official, canonical implementation of CoreFoundation into the WinObjC code base. As a result, the complete CoreFoundation/Foundation framework is now available for use in the bridge.

Layout constraints

This week, we’re adding support for two recent additions to Auto Layout. In iOS 9, Apple introduced two new classes designed to simplify adding layout constraints to views: NSLayoutAnchor and UILayoutGuide. This greatly reduced the amount of code required to create simple, edge-anchored layouts that scale properly when the host screen or window is rotated or resized.

Beginning with this week’s release, the iOS bridge now offers full support for both NSLayoutAnchor and UILayoutGuide.

Of course there are your normal collection of bug fixes and performance improvements but this update allows iOS devs to use even more of their existing Objective-C code and layouts on the Windows 10 version of the app.

Along with the above features, the code samples have all been updated and even more are being prepared for you to use as you dive in and learn more about the bridge.

If you are already using the Windows Bridge for iOS you can download the updated bridge release and new code samples right now from GitHub.

Interested in learning more about the bridge or getting started with it then check out the main Windows Bridge for iOS portal at the Windows Dev Center.

But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.

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