At Microsoft’s Build conference a week ago, the company had announced that it was working on a tool codenamed ‘Centennial’ that could help developers to convert their legacy apps into current generation applications. The company on Saturday, started rolling out the app converter in Preview.
The announcement of the app converter was welcomed with cheers and catcalls by the developers present at the conference. The tool, in short, will not let your apps die if you had written them a while ago in Win32 or .NET. Instead, you could convert the .EXE file of the installer of the app into the currently universal AppX format.
This format not only ensures that you app will run on most of the Windows supportive devices, but it’s also the format of the apps that the Windows Store is currently accepting, more commonly called the Universal Windows Platform.
Desktop App Converter allows developers to bring their desktop apps to UWP. It converts a desktop Windows installer such as MSI or exe to an AppX package that can be deployed to a Windows 10 desktop,
according to a statement at Microsoft Download Center.
Theoretically, Universal Windows apps can run on any device that’s running Windows 10. From wearable smartwatches to smartphones, from portable tablets and laptops to devices without even a user interface, all devices will be able to seamlessly run Universal Windows apps.
