Welcome to .NET Multi-Platform App UI

#1

Post by taspeotis » Mon, May 23, 2022, 8:41 PM UTC

Welcome to .NET Multi-Platform App UI
devblogs.microsoft.com

Re: Welcome to .NET Multi-Platform App UI

#2

Post by tumetab1 » Mon, May 23, 2022, 9:01 PM UTC

It's nice to see this project coming to fruition. I just find it sad Gnome/KDE/Linux are not supported. Still there's always the possibility of doing an Electron-like app using Blazor for Linux apps.

Re: Welcome to .NET Multi-Platform App UI

#3

Post by zamalek » Mon, May 23, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

tumetab1 wrote: post #2

It's nice to see this project coming to fruition. I just find it sad Gnome/KDE/Linux are not supported. Still there's always the possibility of doing an Electron-like app using Blazor for Linux apps.

I've been using .Net since 1.0 beta, and this is one of the major reasons that I'm planning on learning Flutter: Linux support.

Re: Welcome to .NET Multi-Platform App UI

#4

Post by chizhik-pyzhik » Mon, May 23, 2022, 9:41 PM UTC

https://xkcd.com/927/

Re: Welcome to .NET Multi-Platform App UI

#5

Post by banashark » Mon, May 23, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

tumetab1 wrote: post #2

It's nice to see this project coming to fruition. I just find it sad Gnome/KDE/Linux are not supported. Still there's always the possibility of doing an Electron-like app using Blazor for Linux apps.

For those looking for a linux-compatible solution, I've had some success with Avalonia: https://avaloniaui.net/

Specifically I made a small application with F# and the FuncUI library https://github.com/fsprojects/Avalonia.FuncUI

So far the most complex real-world application I've seen is Lunacy: https://icons8.com/lunacy

It's nice to have something like this out there. It definitely eased my apprehension of using the platform on the grounds of it being immature.

I've a decent amount of experience with Xamarin (Native and Forms), and so far I've had 1/100th of the build issues with Avalonia.

I am excited to try out MAUI however and see how things have evolved!

Re: Welcome to .NET Multi-Platform App UI

#6

Post by neonsunset » Mon, May 23, 2022, 9:58 PM UTC

chizhik-pyzhik wrote: post #4

https://xkcd.com/927/

Unfortunately, this XKCD post is used correctly.

.NET is known for its homogeneity and massive standard library that seems to be a black hole where eventually all good implementation of popular libraries end up in.

With one exception: UI frameworks. For whatever reason, UI frameworks have bloody and complicated history starting with early versions of .NET Framework and ending with the latest upcoming .NET 7. Let's hope, fingers crossed, this time is different :D

Re: Welcome to .NET Multi-Platform App UI

#7

Post by metaltyphoon » Mon, May 23, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

Until dog fooding happens, it's a hard pass. Wrote teams on electron / reactive native? Undo that and do it using MAUI. Prove to your developers it's a good stack to sink your time into.

> But but... it was written years ago when MAUI wasn't a thing...

Well it is now and you have infinity money so just do it. We need high profile application to be MAUIs face.

Re: Welcome to .NET Multi-Platform App UI

#8

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, May 23, 2022, 10:16 PM UTC

tumetab1 wrote: post #2

It's nice to see this project coming to fruition. I just find it sad Gnome/KDE/Linux are not supported. Still there's always the possibility of doing an Electron-like app using Blazor for Linux apps.

There's at least one open source community project/fork trying to build a Linux backend (via GtkSharp in this case): https://github.com/jsuarezruiz/maui-linux

Re: Welcome to .NET Multi-Platform App UI

#9

Post by yakkityyak » Mon, May 23, 2022, 10:41 PM UTC

neonsunset wrote: post #6

chizhik-pyzhik wrote: post #4

https://xkcd.com/927/

Unfortunately, this XKCD post is used correctly. .NET is known for its homogeneity and massive standard library that seems to be a black hole where eventually all good implementation of popular libraries end up in. With one exception: UI frameworks. For whatever reason, UI frameworks have bloody and complicated history starting with early versions of .NET Framework and ending with the latest upcoming .NET 7. Let's ho…

I would actually go as far as to say that even in a Microsoft-only vacuum, they have cornered themselves into this exact xkcd post.

If you are working in C#, Microsoft offers at least 5 different UI frameworks to choose from. Off the top of my head there is WinForms, WPF, UWP, WinUI, and now MAUI. All of them step over each others toes to some degree.

As far as I know, it's still impossible to write apps that can fully incorporate the late Windows 10/11 acrylic design language. WinUI 2 & UWP is basically dead, and it still seems like WinUI 3 dropped support for it.*

So if I'm a writing a new app and actually want to adopt the new design language, it still seems like you are stuck with no options.

1. https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/issues/2236

EDIT: after some further sleuthing it sort of looks like window acrylic might show up in WinUI 1.1 coming sometime this year, but it's not so clear.

Re: Welcome to .NET Multi-Platform App UI

#10

Post by jeroenhd » Mon, May 23, 2022, 11:13 PM UTC

tumetab1 wrote: post #2

It's nice to see this project coming to fruition. I just find it sad Gnome/KDE/Linux are not supported. Still there's always the possibility of doing an Electron-like app using Blazor for Linux apps.

The most annoying part to me is that apparently some version of the framework support Tizen, which is just a weird version of Linux running plain old Wayland and Pulse.

I'll have to skip MAUI again because of its lack of Linux support. I guess Microsoft doesn't want the Linux plebs to use their ecosystem.