WinJS - opensource from Microsoft

Two days ago, Microsoft introduced the JavaScript UI-oriented library for cross-platform development - WinJS, which, although it exists quite a long time, but as a separate “set” outside of Windows-binding, was introduced only on 04/02/2014.

http://dailyjs.com/2014/04/03/winjs/
http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/buildingapps/archive/2014/04/02/extending-platform-commonality-through-universal-windows-apps.aspx
https://github.com/winjs/winjs

And what is interesting ...

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The first thing that caught my eye while we were browsing this library:

1) The code is perceived immediately and very organically, despite the fact that they have never worked with this library before;

2) Adequate work with DOM - it is not overloaded with unnecessary and currently invisible elements http://try.buildwinjs.com /default.aspx#listview
http://try.buildwinjs.com/default.aspx#fragments
http://try.buildwinjs.com/default.aspx#pageControl

3) Callbacks for life cycle events;

4) Separately, I would like to note quite successful levels of UI-abstractions (controls, fragments, pages), as a rule, are not fully present in most JavaScript libraries.

Plus a small pile of integrated “buns”, such as Scheduler, Promises, XHR, Binding.

As always, it was not without a “but”: in the future, we will have to explore the possibilities of customizing the visual part. If this is hard enough to implement, then we can get another Sencha Touch. But due to the fact that WinJS is a opensource under apache, we hope that the library will be developed, despite the fact that Microsoft is now perceived only as a source of enterprise solutions.

At the moment, the .NET-community practically does not work on opensource-projects, as in the enterprise-segment, where there are hard NDAs, a serious commitment to opensource is the exception rather than the rule.

Therefore, we hope that Microsoft Open Technologies will burn out this business.