
We are Microsoft. We are here to learn. How can we help you build mobile apps? - joemellin
https://www.research.net/r/8Z96XRG
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Piskvorrr
"We are Microsoft. We are here to learn. (Your knowledge will be
assimilated.)" Rather unfortunate choice of words ;)

~~~
castell
Haha, well the opposite is true:
[http://www.computerworld.com/article/3108380/windows-
pcs/mic...](http://www.computerworld.com/article/3108380/windows-
pcs/microsoft-to-end-decades-old-pick-a-patch-practice-in-windows-7.html)

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JoshuaWeberMSFT
Hi! I'm also a PM at Microsoft. I especially care about all scenarios related
to publishing and distributing mobile apps. Would love to hear about any
current pain points or how we might be able to help the mobile developer
community.

~~~
divbit
Hey - (some specific feedback not covered in the form thingy )- I've been a
long time windows phone user (currently sporting a lumia 950 which shares time
with an ios / android device for developtment), and recently switching to
software coming from a math ph.d., so maybe slightly different background than
typical app developer.

I guess the biggest gap for me is windows mobile getting up to speed on the
react-native stuff. In Android / Ios I can have a roughly working app in a
couple days, but getting a project to the same place on windows mobile has
been a bit more of a hassle. Some basic notes related to this:

1\. Windows tutorials lacking for your example apps:
[https://github.com/ReactWindows/react-native-
windows/tree/ed...](https://github.com/ReactWindows/react-native-
windows/tree/edb9bb631e697bd3d95872c78055e0bd3ab6dd69/UIExplorer) (I would do
a pull request myself to fix it if I had time these days)

2\. These example apps should all work with the run-windows command "out-of-
the-box"

3\. Some simple native plugins would be great (e.g. a "windows hello" react-
native module is something I would have to write if I were to make a windows
mobile version of my current project)

4*. Possibly too much to ask for, but for android / ios the emulator works
standalone (e.g. without xcode / android studio), in windows, I seem to need
full visual studio running, which doesn't sound too bad, but beside photoshop
/ onenote / some other things, can make things a bit slow on a pro 2.

Unrelated, but maybe a prettier version of something like template 10?
(Another project I would do myself if I had time) Comparatively, the ios /
material built-in themes tend to feel much less clunky..

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mattpodwysocki
Hi, this is Matthew Podwysocki from the React Native Windows team here at
Microsoft. I can address some of these points.

1\. Yes, we are working on Windows tutorials at the moment and more detailed
writeups such as how we got the F8 App from Facebook to run on RN for UWP.
We've made a lot of strides lately with our React-Native CLI integration so
you can do `react-native windows` and `react-native run-windows` which allows
you to build and run your applications without requiring you to fire up Visual
Studio.

2\. We are definitely working on the examples to make sure they work out of
the box with our run-windows command and will make sure that's done ASAP.

3\. Yes, that's the intention to have a Hello Windows module. Right now we
have a little sample that shows how to make custom controls and modules such
as here: [https://github.com/rozele/rn-tr23](https://github.com/rozele/rn-
tr23) with a map control but we will move a few to our GitHub organization to
show you how its done.

4\. With the React-CLI and run-windows, you should not need full Visual Studio
running unless you are deploying to a device or emulator. If you are having
issues with that, please file an issue and we'll get to it as soon as
possible.

Unrelated: We are open to prettier templates but currently we are using the
standard XAML templates which come with UWP so they have the look and feel of
a common UWP app.

We're also looking at the list of the most popular React Native modules and
ensuring that they work with React Native for UWP.

~~~
divbit
Awesome thanks for the hard work and feedback! yeah with respect to point 4, I
mainly mentioned this because I do almost all of my app development while
running the thing in an emulator - maybe you are saying it's only needed for
the deployment step, and not the reload nowaways? (that would be a definite
improvement) will have to check it out.

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joemellin
Hello!

I am a PM at Microsoft and we are looking to learn about how we can help
mobile app developers work faster and build better apps.

Can you share your thoughts?

Best, -Joe

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mdb31
From the linked page: "Open only to legal residents of the 50 U.S. and D.C".
So, no, apparently I can't...

~~~
joemellin
Sorry about that. We are giving away a Surface 3 to one lucky respondent and
it is hard to do that outside the US.

