The Windows Library for JavaScript (abbreviated as WinJS) is an open-source

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

. It has been designed with the primary goal of easing development of Windows Store apps for

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...

and

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

, as well as Windows Phone apps for

Windows Phone 8.1 Windows Phone 8.1 is the discontinued third generation of Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile operating system, succeeding Windows Phone 8. Rolled out at Microsoft's Build Conference in San Francisco, California, on April 2, 2014, it was released ...

Windows 10 Mobile Windows 10 Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft. First released in 2015, it is a successor to Windows Phone 8.1, but was marketed by Microsoft as being an edition of its PC operating system Windows 10. Wind ...

and

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third base console in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was first released in North America, parts of ...

applications using

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

and

, as an alternative to using WinRT XAML and C#,

VB.NET Visual Basic, originally called Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET), is a multi-paradigm, object-oriented programming language, implemented on .NET, Mono, and the .NET Framework. Microsoft launched VB.NET in 2002 as the successor to its original Visua ...

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

( CX). WinJS started as a technology that was specific to Windows Store apps, but has evolved to aim at working in any

Web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

. In April 2014, during the

Microsoft Build Microsoft Build (often stylised as ) is an annual conference event held by Microsoft, aimed at software engineers and web developers using Windows, Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft technologies. First held in 2011, it serves as a succes ...

developer conference, WinJS was released under the Apache License as

free and open source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

to port it to other than Microsoft platforms. A site dedicated to demonstrating the library has also been published. Future development is focused on maintaining what currently exists in the project. There are no plans for new features or feature requests, meaning no plans for a new feature release.

Overview

WinJS provides helpers that facilitate the development of Windows Store apps using

and

. The library consists of modules and functions that expose the

Windows Runtime Windows Runtime (WinRT) is a platform-agnostic component and application architecture first introduced in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 in 2012. It is implemented in C++ and officially supports development in C++ (via C++/WinRT, C++/CX or ...

in a way that is consistent with JavaScript coding conventions. WinJS makes it possible to add Windows UI controls in

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

. This is accompanied by support for

data binding In computer programming, data binding is a general technique that binds data sources from the provider and consumer together and synchronizes them. This is usually done with two data/information sources with different languages, as in XML data bin ...

and a template engine. Other JavaScript frameworks, such as

JQuery jQuery is a JavaScript library designed to simplify HTML DOM tree traversal and manipulation, as well as event handling, CSS animation, and Ajax. It is free, open-source software using the permissive MIT License. As of Aug 2022, jQuery is u ...

, can work side-by-side with WinJS. The library comes with additional declaration files for a rich developer experience using

TypeScript TypeScript is a free and open source programming language developed and maintained by Microsoft. It is a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript and adds optional static typing to the language. It is designed for the development of large app ...

, a strict superset of

with annotations. TypeScript enables for code completion and refactoring while maintaining compatibility with JavaScript.

Features

* UI controls with fundamental support for touch, mouse and keyboard. *

Scaffolding Scaffolding, also called scaffold or staging, is a temporary structure used to support a work crew and materials to aid in the construction, maintenance and repair of buildings, bridges and all other man-made structures. Scaffolds are widely use ...

Version history

WinJS 1.0

The first version of WinJS. It was released with

WinJS 2.0

WinJS was released as open-source software under the Apache License on GitHub by popular demand. The project aimed at cross-platform and browser compatibility. The following distributions are derived from WinJS 2.0: * WinJS 2.0 for Windows 8.1 * WinJS Xbox 1.0 for Windows * WinJS Phone 2.1 for Windows Phone 8.1

WinJS 3.0

WinJS 3.0 was released in September, 2014 with special focus on: * Cross-browser/cross-platform support spanning the most popular desktop and mobile browsers, as well as HTML-based app environments like

Apache Cordova Apache Cordova (formerly PhoneGap) is a mobile application development framework created by Nitobi. Adobe Systems purchased Nitobi in 2011, rebranded it as PhoneGap, and later released an open-source version of the software called Apache Cordov ...

* JavaScript modularization giving developers the control to optimize their performance and load just the modules of the WinJS library they need for their Web site or app * Improved universal control designs

WinJS 4.0

A preview of WinJS 4.0 was announced on March 27, 2015, and the full release was announced on June 8.

References

External links

Developing Windows Store apps (HTML)

WinJS Namespace

WinJS Playground

WinJS
project on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continu ...

{{Microsoft FOSS JavaScript libraries Microsoft application programming interfaces Microsoft free software Software using the Apache license Windows 8 Windows Phone Windows technology 2012 software