windows

The Boss Update & Add-Ons are coming to Minecraft Oct. 18 MINECON is here and we’re excited to bring you more details about the next big update for Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition Beta, Minecraft: Pocket Edition, and Minecraft: Gear VR Edition, releasing on Oct. 18. As we mentioned a few weeks ago, the Boss Update is bringing boss battles to these versions of Minecraft for the first time. Also arriving in the Boss Update will be the first iteration of Add-Ons. With Add-Ons, you’ll be able to experiment with remixing components of entities or characters in the game.  Worlds you create with Add-Ons can be shared with others directly or uploaded to your Realms and accessed anytime, anywhere. For even more details about Add-Ons and a handy FAQ, check here! In addition to new gameplay features and the ability for [ more… ]

Background Audio and Cross Platform Development with Xamarin (App Dev on Xbox series) We are back with yet another app, Backdrop, an open source sample media app developed to showcase a cross-device music experience. In this blog post, we will dive deep into the new background model in the Universal Windows Platform, and specifically focus on how to enable your application to continue playing audio in the background  across Windows 10 devices, including Xbox One, delivering a stellar customer experience. In addition, we will show you how we built Backdrop to be a cross platform application by using Xamarin to share code between Windows 10 and AppleTV. The source code for the application is available on GitHub right now so make sure to check it out. If you missed the previous blog post from last week on Unity interop and [ more… ]

This Week on Windows: Forza Horizon 3, fall TV and “Destination: Mars” We hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of This Week on Windows! Check out our Windows 10 Tip blog post to learn more about how you can enable Windows Spotlight images on your lock screen. Head over here to read about the HoloLens experience “Destination: Mars,” here to find out how you can get Forza Horizon 3 early and here to learn about the new desktop apps in the Windows Store. Or, keep reading to see what’s new in the Windows Store this week! Check out all the ways you can watch your favorite shows on Windows this fall! Sling TV Download the Sling TV app and watch your favorite fall premieres live on TBS, AMC, Comedy Central, and more. Get 7 days free and start watching today! Restrictions [ more… ]

Building in 10k: Compilation, Optimization, and Compression Editor’s note: This is the sixth (and final) in a series of posts from the team that built the 10k Apart contest site, exploring the process of building for interoperability, accessibility, and progressive enhancement in less than 10kB. In the previous post in this series, I did a deep dive into many of the JavaScript enhancements available to visitors to the 10k Apart site. It was a significant read and if you made it through the whole thing, I commend you. Once all of the front-end code was basically done, it was time to turn our attention toward compressing the heck out to it. GZip would be there to help us, certainly, but we could do more… a lot more. In this post, Antón Molleda, David García, and I will discuss workflow, server [ more… ]