14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has several ongoing projects behind closed doors, and the company is still looking into ways to bring its ideas to fruition, so an unnamed team has recently started working on a fresh effort called “Project Europe.”
Almost nothing is known at this point about Project Europe, but the company teased it for the very first time at the Build Tour in Barcelona, where it only showed a slide revealing the name of this project.
Microsoft says this is “a secret project on UWP,” so it might be in one way or another an effort supposed to help the company make universal apps succeed and tackle the lack of apps plaguing modern Windows platforms, including phones.
More “Projects”
Redmond has until now launched several similar projects, some of them bridges supposed to empower developers to bring applications from rival platforms, such as Android and iOS, to Windows 10 and make them universal apps running on all devices, including PCs and smartphones.
Project Islandwood and Astoria had already been announced and presented on several occasions, but the latter has since been discontinued for no clear reason.
While Islandwood is still going forward, Astoria no longer has a place in Microsoft’s vision, despite the fact that, at some point during the development of Windows 10 Mobile, users could actually install and run Android apps on Lumia phones.
At the same time, Microsoft is also investing in Project Centennial, whose purpose is to help developers bring Win32 desktop programs to the store and offer them as universal apps.
More details on Project Europe are very likely to be offered in the coming weeks and months, as all of these are based on developer support, so the company needs to provide more information to make sure that it succeeds. For the moment, just take it as a secret project that has something to do with universal apps.