Well, at least they got the name right! We recently heard about Microsoft’s plan to unify UWP and Win32. And Project Reunion is the official codename of this endeavor.
The software titan has had to deal with severe headwinds ever since it unveiled its modern Universal Windows Platform.
Originally, the goal was to have Windows 10 hit a billion userbase within two to three years, but this target was abandoned less than a year after release of the OS. Most of the userbase preferred to stick with Windows 7 and even Windows 8.1, and consequently, most developers just stuck with Win32.
With Project Reunion, Microsoft is now aiming to unify the two app platforms.
And Redmond is going to do that by decoupling Win32 and UWP API from the operating system, while allowing developers the ability to access them with NuGet — essentially, creating a common platform for the operating system.
This is a significant development. For the reason that typically new platform changes like these come with feature updates to the OS, and apps that rely on the require the new feature update.
But since this new Project Reunion platform isn’t tied to the operating system, Microsoft is now in a position to make improvements without requiring a feature update.
Case in point, the WebView2 feature that has already been decoupled from the operating system. This is what powers the new Chromium based Edge. In fact, the company is expanding this as part of Project Reunion, meaning developers can now including WebView2 in their applications.
All very exciting developments for developers and users, both.
The company promises that these new or existing apps that are upgraded will work across supported versions of Windows, which is to say older versions of Windows 10, seeing as Windows 7 is now retired.
Redmond has been working on all this stuff a while now.
It already has the WinUI 3out in first preview, which you can check out here.
