Microsoft today announced version 2.2 of the UWP Community toolkit, a collection of open source controls developers can use to easily create UWP apps.

Version 2.2 introduces a new Parsers package, new controls and helpers, and many improvements and bug fixes to existing APIs. While UWP Community Toolkit is for mostly targetted at desktop apps, it also works great on Xbox One, Mobile, HoloLens, IoT and Surface Hub devices.

See what’s new below:

Microsoft.Toolkit.Parsers and MarkdownTextBlock

V2.0 of the UWP Community Toolkit introduced several new .NET Standard packages, with a commitment to support more cross platform APIs. Building on top of that commitment, V2.2 introduces a new .NET Standard package: Microsoft.Toolkit.Parsers. This package includes parsers for markdown and RSS that can be used across UWP and other platforms that support .NET Standard 1.4 or above.

In addition, the MarkdownTextBlock control is leveraging the new renderer and in addition, supports:

Code syntax highlighting

SVG images and image width/height syntax

Relative URIs for images and links

Comments and more

Staggered panel

A new panel has been added to enable staggered layout where items are added to columns with the least amount of space.

XAML Brushes

V2.2 introduces a new namespace (Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.UI.Media) and adds 7 composition based brushes, including a RadialGradientBrush. The backdrop brushes apply the effect to whatever is behind the element in the app.

MSAL support and cross-platform Microsoft Graph and OneDrive service

A .NET Standard version of both the Graph and OneDrive services has been introduced and the old OneDrive service has been marked obsolete. The .NET Standard versions of each service now support Microsoft Authentication Library (MSAL) and consumption outside of purely UWP apps. The new service can be found in the Microsoft.Toolkit.Services package.

Notifications package support for My People shoulder taps

With the latest update, the notifications package now includes new toast features for My People shoulder taps, so developers can easily enable this feature in their apps.

See the full release notes for the complete list of what is new in v2.2.

You can get started by following this tutorial or preview the latest features by installing the UWP Community Toolkit Sample App from the Microsoft Store.

Via Microsoft.com