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.NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

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Re: .NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

#101

Post by nicoburns »

judah wrote: post #6

This is interesting for sure. Kudos for bringing this capability to the web! One issue the demos reveal is, it doesn't _feel_ like the web. That is, I can't hit Ctrl+F to find text on a page. I can't select text with my cursor. I can't copy the address of a hyperlink. On my phone, I can't hard press on an image and share it to others. Screen readers can't handle it. I can't press a shortcut key to make everything lar…

Yeah. I think you need to render to actual DOM nodes when targeting the web if you want a first class experience.

We're betting on this over at https://github.com/DioxusLabs/dioxus where we're building a cross-platform UI solution that enables you to do this by having a web-centric API (we are developing our own custom HTML/CSS renderer for native platforms).

Re: .NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

#102

Post by jzebedee »

apatheticonion wrote: post #71
latentsea wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never build a frontend on a .NET technology. Period. They always end up unsupported in the end. Just use standard web technologies and thank yourself later. I've been a .NET dev for a decade now and that's what I've learnt.

Tauri is pretty awesome. Rust backend, WebView front end. Nothing uses native desktop elements of course. To be fair, there is no practical way to write native desktop applications using stylistically consistent UI elements AND have it be portable AND in a language that you enjoy using. As far as I can tell, Windows 11 doesn't even have a toolkit with platform UI elements. GTK on Gnome is pretty okay and GTK-rs is no…

> As far as I can tell, Windows 11 doesn't even have a toolkit with platform UI elements.

They do, it's called WinUI 3. It's barely used for all of the aforementioned.

Re: .NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

#103

Post by powersnail »

codedokode wrote: post #88
apatheticonion wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tauri is pretty awesome. Rust backend, WebView front end. Nothing uses native desktop elements of course. To be fair, there is no practical way to write native desktop applications using stylistically consistent UI elements AND have it be portable AND in a language that you enjoy using. As far as I can tell, Windows 11 doesn't even have a toolkit with platform UI elements. GTK on Gnome is pretty okay and GTK-rs is no…

> Rust backend, WebView front end. I don't know much about it but it seems like a weird combination. If you want high performance and low memory usage, you don't want HTML, if you want fast code writing, you don't want Rust.

I could see a case where the core logic needs to be performant, but the UI does not. The front end could be some menus, displaying (not a giant amount of) data, and a progress bar, while the back end does heavy computing.

And furthermore, if you want fast code writing, you write in the language you already know. For some people, that is Rust.

Re: .NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

#104

Post by thayne »

kg wrote: post #60
afavour wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I’m showing my ignorance… how do you add ARIA landmarks to Canvas elements?

You would create transparent DOM elements in the right places with the right ARIA attributes and content, I suspect.

That's possible. But it is difficult to get right, and can have poor performance if you you have many such elements.

Re: .NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

#105

Post by issafram »

glzone1 wrote: post #83
password4321 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except WinForms, spectacular for Windows-only utility GUIs.

No kidding - kind of wild that winforms is still kind of a gold standard experience today! I actually liked VB Forms - lots of easy rapid application development was possible.

WPF as well

Re: .NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

#106

Post by issafram »

latentsea wrote: post #42
mattfrommars wrote: post #25

In the .NET ecosystem, I have noticed people to shame .NET MAUI because Microsoft themselves don't use this framework - Microsoft Team is built on Electron and not MAUI. Why build a product on MAUI when Microsoft aren't too sure about it.

Never build a frontend on a .NET technology. Period. They always end up unsupported in the end. Just use standard web technologies and thank yourself later. I've been a .NET dev for a decade now and that's what I've learnt.

So you've never used WinForms, WPF and MVC

Re: .NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

#107

Post by LeFantome »

issafram wrote: post #106
latentsea wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never build a frontend on a .NET technology. Period. They always end up unsupported in the end. Just use standard web technologies and thank yourself later. I've been a .NET dev for a decade now and that's what I've learnt.

So you've never used WinForms, WPF and MVC

MVC is not .NET of course.

You are right that WinForms and MVC have been around forever. However, Microsoft has continuously told devs that they are the past. So, you would be forgiven for expecting them to go away.

WinUI is the current official desktop paradigm and it is basically UWP from an API point of view. So the idea that UWP went away is not 100% accurate either.

Microsoft does not really abandon their UI tech like people say they do. But look how many different frameworks they have.

All of the above is Windows desktop only. There are a completely different set of UI technologies for the web.

UNO Platform (Open Source) allows you to use the WinUI API to target almost anything.

.NET MAUI is the official "cross platform" UI tech from Microsoft. It is what you use to target iOS and Android. As a bonus, you can target macOS and Windows too. On Windows, it uses WinUI. You will notice that the Linux desktop is missing from that list.

Here comes Avalonia to build MAUI on top of the Avalonia framework. This adds Linux and WASM to the list of platforms that MAUI will run on. Adding Linux is awesome. A lot of people have wanted that and it really completes the MAUI cross-platform story.

Adding WASM is neat but MAUI was never meant to target the web. If you use it for that, it is literally just the modern version of Silverlight. But Microsoft did not design it for that at all. It is just a back-end that Avalonia supports.

Re: .NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

#108

Post by LeFantome »

judah wrote: post #6

This is interesting for sure. Kudos for bringing this capability to the web! One issue the demos reveal is, it doesn't _feel_ like the web. That is, I can't hit Ctrl+F to find text on a page. I can't select text with my cursor. I can't copy the address of a hyperlink. On my phone, I can't hard press on an image and share it to others. Screen readers can't handle it. I can't press a shortcut key to make everything lar…

MAUI was never intended for the web. This is not what Microsoft wants you to use it for.

WASM is just one of the platforms that Avalonia supports and so, if you run MAUI on Avalonia, you can run it on WASM.

If you do that though, it is going to be like rendering any other desktop GUI toolkit in WASM. It is not a web app. I mean, it is cool you can do it and MAUI in WASM is better than no web capability at all I guess. But you would never set out to create a web app in MAUI.

MAUI on Avalonia on WASM is really a modern replacement for Silverlight. And it will likely be about as popular.

The really cool thing is being able to target the Linux desktop finally. A lot of people will love that.

And, while MAUI was meant to use native controls on each platform, many people may prefer the Avalonia approach of having your app render the same everywhere.

Re: .NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

#109

Post by happymellon »

charcircuit wrote: post #70
a2128 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using the standard web stuff usually means it's also an accessibility nightmare, tried using a screen reader on the demo and it doesn't work at all unfortunately

What screen reader? Over the last few years AI's ability to understand images has improved a lot.

I can't code, I'll use an LLM to write one!

I can't use your app, I'll use an LLM to read it!

Re: .NET MAUI is coming to Linux and the browser

#110

Post by tcoff91 »

mdasen wrote: post #54
mattfrommars wrote: post #25

In the .NET ecosystem, I have noticed people to shame .NET MAUI because Microsoft themselves don't use this framework - Microsoft Team is built on Electron and not MAUI. Why build a product on MAUI when Microsoft aren't too sure about it.

> Microsoft Team is built on Electron and not MAUI Microsoft Teams was released in March 2017. .NET MAUI was released in May 2022. In 2021, Microsoft replaced Angular with React and moved away from Electron to WebView2 (using the OS' built-in renderer rather than a bundled Chromium). So even the rewrite was a year before MAUI (and they probably started the rewrite before 2021). Plus, part of the point of using React…

Microsoft seems more committed to react native than MAUI.
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