Updated: July 15, 2020 (May 26, 2014)

Universal Apps Architecture

Before joining Directions on Microsoft, Rob worked at Microsoft for 14 years where he designed technologies for Microsoft products and... more

The development frameworks supported by Windows Phone 8.1 offer about 90% API compatibility with Windows 8.1. These shared underpinnings reduce the development effort of targeting applications to both Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1. Windows Phone 8.1 adds support for the Windows XAML framework, making it compatible with Windows 8.1 XAML; previously Windows Phone only supported a Silverlight-based version of XAML that is mostly not compatible with the Windows 8.1 XAML framework.

Windows Phone 8.1 also adds support for writing applications using the WinJS JavaScript library, which has been supported for Windows Store applications since Windows 8.

These frameworks access the Windows Runtime APIs, which expose OS functionality by communicating with the Windows kernel, which is shared by Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1.

An application built using the Universal Apps strategy can share the majority of its code and resources between versions that run on Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1, but separate compilation and application packages for store submission are required for each platform.

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