I first created the “Charming” libraries for Windows Phone in order to add some APIs which were added to Windows 8 but not available on phone. Many of the early ones replicated the “Charms” related functionality (Sharing/Search/Settings) hence the silly name.
When I created version 9 about a year ago I consolidated lots of separate libraries into just two – InTheHand and InTheHand.UI. The latter contained UI specific functionality such as MessageDialog, ToastNotification and ApplicationSettings. Following this I extended the library with support for iOS and Android using Xamarin and exposing the same UWP style API.
As I’ve been doing Xamarin development recently I’m constantly having to look for or write wrappers for native APIs to use across platforms. You sometimes find libraries which claim to provide a cross-platform API but actually only support iOS and Android. I looked at the large codebase I already had and thought about other areas which could be implemented across all the Windows and Xamarin platforms. Among the Windows platforms I added Win32 support so you can use these same APIs from Console, WinForms or WPF applications on versions prior to Windows 10. Since a lot of desktop apps still support Windows Vista and 7 this was very important to provide future code compatibility with Windows 10.
I’d toyed with changing the name before because it’s now irrelevant in an OS which no longer has the concept of Charms. I thought about the Windows 10 “bridges” – to take Desktop Apps, iOS and Silverlight to UWP and thought what I have here is effectively another bridge. It’s a flexible one though and it also works in both directions. You can code C# on numerous platforms and that code will be instantly portable to UWP. You can also use your UWP knowledge to easily target some of the more fiddly aspects of Xamarin platforms consistently. If you consider a Xamarin Forms application which might target iOS, Android and Windows once you step beyond laying out forms with the built in controls and basic page navigation there is no common API to work with Settings, Files, Geolocation, Network connectivity and more. If you are able to find a NuGet library which supports all the platforms you need you’ll have to learn a whole new API too. One word which kept springing to mind with the concept of a flexible bridge is Pontoon and so this is what I chose. Wikipedia says “A pontoon bridge, also known as a floating bridge, uses floats or shallow-draft boats to support a continuous deck for pedestrian and vehicle travel”. Although I renamed the GitHub repository this is a direct continuation of the Charming codebase but there will be a few breaking changes hence the new NuGet package and major version change.
If you are interesting in contributing to the library please do get in touch. There are a number of open issues which are still to be addressed and many more API areas which would make sense to implement in this way. I’ve consciously avoided most UI areas because this is something you’ll need to approach differently for each platform (unless you use Xamarin Forms) and I didn’t want introduce any additional dependencies. There are some UI elements such as StatusBar, MessageDialog, Toast/Badge notifications, CameraCaptureUI etc. I consider these to be part of the “Chrome” rather than your app UI – they will all have a very different look and feel depending on the platform but perform the same functions.
I’m still working on a sample application. I’ll probably use Xamarin Forms in order to create a simple UI to surface as much of this functionality as possible.
As always I welcome all constructive feedback – please use GitHub to raise any issues.
NuGet: https://www.nuget.org/packages/InTheHand.Pontoon/
GitHub: https://github.com/inthehand/Pontoon
Docs: http://inthehand.github.io/
In The Hand Ltd 