Beware of generated XAML in UWP

I admit, this is s strange blog post title but that’s what this post is going to talk about.

I’m working on a UWP app that has different min and target runtimes:

After doing some UI work with Visual Studio & Blend I’ve discovered that the app was crashing on machines without Anniversary edition installed. At the end of a debuggin session I’ve found the reason: The XAML template generated by the tools contains incompatible elements (resources mainly, but also new properties) that are not present on previous builds.

To give you an example, this is an extract from a ComboBox default template, generated by Blend when you use the Template->Edit copy feature:

10586

<Setter Property=”Foreground”

Value=”{ThemeResource SystemControlForegroundBaseHighBrush}” />

14393 (Anniversary)

<Setter Property=”Foreground”

Value=”{ThemeResource ComboBoxForeground}” />

The reason of this is because the tools generate the template from the Target version SDK and not the Min version SDK that might even not be present.

The team said that they’re going to give you some warnings in the future when situations like this happen, but in the meantime, at least when you’re doing design work, be sure to selected, the min target version SDK otherwise you might end up in troubles.