During the Connect(); // 2016, the Windows team talked about the Universal Windows Platform and about some of the great tooling improvements that have happened in recent months.

Kevin Gallo, VP and Program Manager Director of the Windows Platform team, was joined by Mazhar Mohammed and Dave Alles for an hour-long panel discussion and Q&A on Channel 9. Mazhar is the Director of Partner Services of for the Windows Store team, and Dave is the Group Program Manager for the team that created the Maps app for Windows.

Check out the video below to see the interesting conversation between leaders of the teams that create the Windows Platform and the Store, and one of the teams that uses both in creating a major Windows app. Kevin talks about why developers should target UWP, while Mazhar discusses the constant improvements in the Store and Dev Center. Dave talks about what a 1^st-party app thinks about new features, and interacts with the platform team to provide feedback and request functionality. This is actually very similar to the way external developers provide input and feedback via UserVoice!

In the keynote, Stacey Doerr joined Scott Hanselman on stage to talk about automated UI testing of Windows apps using WinAppDriver and Appium. This isn’t just for testing UWP apps, but all Windows applications, including applications built in VB6 or Delphi and more. For more details about WinAppDriver, check out Yosef’s in-depth blog post: Windows Application Driver for PC integrates with Appium. Scott also has a great overview on getting started tested on Windows with Appium.

The Windows teams also did the following four presentations to provide deeper dives into the Desktop Bridge and a set of new and improved developer tooling capabilities:

• Using the Desktop Bridge to bring desktop apps to the Windows Store with Stefan Wick
• Improvements to Bash on Windows and the Windows Console with Rich Turner
• Windows Device Portal with Hirsch Singhal
• Improving App Quality with UI Automation with Yosef Durr