Microsoft has been making a concentrated effort to make the Windows platform easier to develop apps for in recent years. The cross-device nature of Windows 10 is the most obvious example of the company’s attempt to attract developers but even within that broad gesture there are numerous smaller developments that have been designed to attract more people to design for Windows or even port their existing iOS or Android app to the Windows app format.
During Build 2015, Microsoft announced that it will be adding support for Secure Shell (SSH) in Windows 10 to allow for better interoperability between PowerShell and SSH and also revealed plans to support Node.js (an open source, cross platform runtime environment for server-side and networking applications).
This week however, Microsoft has announced FFmpeg support for Window 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1, and Windows 10 applications which offers a lot of potential for media streaming app developers. FFmpeg is a free, open-source multimedia framework that gives users access to almost all media formats including .mkv, .flv, and .mov and is currently implemented in the VLC media player and Google’s Chrome browser.
In an official Windows blog post, the Windows Apps Team provides instructions and several samples for how to implement FFmpeg and also announces the launch of the new open-source project, FFmpegInterop library for Windows, which aims to reduce the time and cost it usually takes for developers to render audio and video frames themselves after including FFmpeg libraries in their apps.
Microsoft continues to support developers by implementing suggestions from the community to make developing apps for Windows as easy and rewarding as possible and they’re always open to new suggestions for formats to support or methods to implement. What else do you think Microsoft needs to do to attract app developers? Share your thoughts in the comments below.