What is Project Centennial? Everything You Need To Know About It

Microsoft announced Project Centennial during its Build 2015 developer conference. Project Centennial aims to help developers publish their .NET and Win32 desktop applications to the Windows Store. Project Centennial is a toolkit that will enable desktop developers to package and publish their existing .NET and Win32-based Windows applications to the Windows Store. Developers can also use Centennial to call common UWP APIs and services.

So far Microsoft already has two big projects for developers, namely, Project Astoria and Project Islandwood. Don’t worry if you do not know about them. We will explain them before moving on to explaining Project Centennial.

Project Astoria was Windows Bridge for Android, which was meant to allow Android app developers to port their Android apps to Windows using their existing code. Microsoft recently announced they are killing Project Astoria due to “developer confusion.”

Project Islandwood is a Windows Bridge for iOS. It enables iOS app developers to build Universal Windows Platform apps using their existing Objective-C code.

What is Project Centennial?

Microsoft announced Project Centennial during its Build 2015 developer conference. Project Centennial aims to help developers publish their .NET and Win32 desktop applications to the Windows Store. Now, you may wonder why Microsoft wants developers to port their “classic desktop” Windows applications to the Windows Store?

Microsoft wants its Windows Store be more successful. The only way that is going to happen if it is full with Windows apps. Rewriting the code of existing “classic desktop” application is expensive task for developers. Microsoft knows the only way to entice developers to move their existing apps over to the Universal Windows Platform is to help them port using various toolkits. After all it’s a gold mine of 60 million “classic desktop” Windows applications Microsoft is looking at. It’s not hard to imagine why Microsoft wants to help developers port as many of these over to the new Universal Windows Platform. Thus converting those desktop applications into Universal Windows 10 apps. For more details, you can watch the official in-depth video below showcasing Project Centennial during Build 2015.

How to Sign Up for Project Centennial?

At the moment, Microsoft is offering limited testing to a select number of developers. If you are interested, you can sign up here for Project Centennial here.

The Windows Bridge toolkits will make it easier for developers to bring their existing code to Windows 10 and Windows Store. Initially Microsoft is releasing the bridges as Limited Developer Preview program so that the engineering team can gather enough feedback necessary to make advancements to the tools and better serve the needs of the developer community. After gathering enough feedback Microsoft will make these toolkits broadly available for all developers.

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