More unified Windows GUI frameworks?
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Another controversial topic: windows GUI APIs. Don't know enough to decide if this is anything important or interesting or not.
Announcing more ways, we’re making app development easier on Windows
Building great apps on Windows should be easier – no matter how your app is written. We want to ensure you have a path forward to make your apps better on Windows and we’re doing that with
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@Benjamin-Hall UWP had few benefits for already existing software, and was missing functionality vs. Win32 API.
So they try again by... porting the Win32 API functions to a new API? So that porting work will be easier and not lose features, I presume.
Am I reading that right?
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@acrow I think a better way to look at it is that they’re decoupling UWP from Windows. It used to be that your whole app had to be UWP, and any new features required OS updates. Now you can just adopt specific components while leaving the bulk of your app in Win32, and they will ship new features in NuGet packages instead of requiring new OS service packs and SDKs.
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Too fucking late to get your shit together, Microsoft. Enjoy seeing Windows APIs fade to HTML5 and Android apps.
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@anonymous234 said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
Too fucking late to get your shit together, Microsoft. Enjoy seeing Windows APIs fade to HTML5 and Android apps.
You could say the same about Android, and I assume iOS. I've always been annoyed by the whole "app is a HTML control" thing. I understand the code reusability angle, but I'd rather have natively written apps or at least have apps that feel like they belong on the platform. Blame Java GUIs for this mindset.
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Not sure what peoples' problems are with Win32. Half-baked HTML/JS APIs are infinitely more frustrating.
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@anonymous234 said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
Too fucking late to get your shit together, Microsoft. Enjoy seeing Windows APIs fade to HTML5 and Android apps.
As if Microsoft had any impact on that.
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@Gąska said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
@anonymous234 said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
Too fucking late to get your shit together, Microsoft. Enjoy seeing Windows APIs fade to HTML5 and Android apps.
As if Microsoft had any impact on that.
Well, if their own apps use Electron, it's only reasonable for people to lose faith in UWP.
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@dfdub can you lose something you never had, though?
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@Benjamin-Hall I think that plays into their .NET MAUI development.
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@anonymous234 said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
Too fucking late to get your shit together, Microsoft. Enjoy seeing Windows APIs fade to HTML5 and Android apps.
Just making my particular skillset more valuable.
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@Zenith said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
Not sure what peoples' problems are with Win32. Half-baked HTML/JS APIs are infinitely more frustrating.
Every UI developer seems to be under the impression that their application is special and therefore needs its own unique style for absolutely everything, usability be dammed. Win32 makes reskinning absolutely everything for no good reason difficult and is therefore bad.
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@anonymous234 said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
Too fucking late to get your shit together, Microsoft. Enjoy seeing Windows APIs fade to HTML5 and Android apps.
YES.
They needed to start working on a cross-platform app framework the moment company was restructured to not be Windows-centric anymore.
Their own new products are now using Electron, who are they kidding with this shit?
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@cartman82 said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
They needed to start working on a cross-platform app framework the moment company was restructured to not be Windows-centric anymore.
So, can we expect them to acquire either Qt or wxWidgets Real Soon Now
?
inb4:
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@dcon said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
@cartman82 said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
They needed to start working on a cross-platform app framework the moment company was restructured to not be Windows-centric anymore.
So, can we expect them to acquire either Qt or wxWidgets Real Soon Now
?
inb4:
Introducing .NET Multi-platform App UI - .NET Blog
You can build anything with .NET. It’s one of the main reasons millions of developers choose .NET as the platform for their careers, and companies invest for their businesses. With .NET 5 we begin our journey of unifying the .NET platform,
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@Rhywden said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
@dcon said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
@cartman82 said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
They needed to start working on a cross-platform app framework the moment company was restructured to not be Windows-centric anymore.
So, can we expect them to acquire either Qt or wxWidgets Real Soon Now
?
inb4:
Introducing .NET Multi-platform App UI - .NET Blog
You can build anything with .NET. It’s one of the main reasons millions of developers choose .NET as the platform for their careers, and companies invest for their businesses. With .NET 5 we begin our journey of unifying the .NET platform,
Ah, vaporware.
We will begin shipping .NET MAUI previews later this year, and target general availability with .NET 6 in November of 2021.
So my 17 year old project will continue on wxWidgets for a while...
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@Rhywden Interesting. Seems like their version of React Native, just with a dotnet runtime instead of javascript puppeteering native widgets. Windows and macOS, no linux announced. I'm a bit skeptical about mobiles being bundled with desktops, that never works out well.
I'll definitely try it out when it comes out, but I don't have high hopes they won't fuck it up.
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@cartman82 said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
@Rhywden Interesting. Seems like their version of React Native, just with a dotnet runtime instead of javascript puppeteering native widgets. Windows and macOS, no linux announced. I'm a bit skeptical about mobiles being bundled with desktops, that never works out well.
I'll definitely try it out when it comes out, but I don't have high hopes they won't fuck it up.
The GitHub repo makes mention of a Linux version.
GitHub - dotnet/maui: .NET MAUI is the .NET Multi-platform App UI, a framework for building native device applications spanning mobile, tablet, and desktop.
.NET MAUI is the .NET Multi-platform App UI, a framework for building native device applications spanning mobile, tablet, and desktop. - dotnet/maui
Which does include a
Xamarin.Forms.Platform.GTKtarget.
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@Rhywden It sounds like they came up with that cool surfer cartoon and needed an acronym to justify its existence.
I swear to God, does anybody develop apps with more features year over year or do they all subscribe to the philosophy of endless 60% rewrites?
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@Zenith said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
@Rhywden It sounds like they came up with that cool surfer cartoon and needed an acronym to justify its existence.
I swear to God, does anybody develop apps with more features year over year or do they all subscribe to the philosophy of endless 60% rewrites?
Well, they are promising that quite a lot will be handled by a simple namespace replacement (i.e. Xamarin.Forms => System.Maui)
How much breaking changes there actually will be is anyone's guess.
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@Zenith said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
does anybody develop apps with more features year over year
That sounds like hard work.
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You thought it was hard picking a .Net UI framework. It's not.
From here, which is rather light on information:
Choosing the Right UI Framework for Native Windows Applications -- Visual Studio Magazine
What tech should a .NET coder use for a new Windows desktop app when presented with a dizzying array of options that include .NET MAUI, WinUI, WinForms, WPF, UWP, Blazor and so on?
Edit:
Conspicuously missing Avalonia.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
Another controversial topic: windows GUI APIs. Don't know enough to decide if this is anything important or interesting or not.
Announcing more ways, we’re making app development easier on Windows
Building great apps on Windows should be easier – no matter how your app is written. We want to ensure you have a path forward to make your apps better on Windows and we’re doing that with
Placing commas in titles, we didn't intend to be funny.
@Zecc said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
You thought it was hard picking a .Net UI framework. It's not.
Microsoft said the more ways the easier!!!!
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@Zecc Another chapter in the
Cascade of Attention Deficit Teenagers
?
We have some many frameworks which are actually version 0.7 or perhaps 0.9. But all of them have too many fuckups.I personally would use (outside of web apps) WPF, as it removes tons of boiler plate code from WinForms through binding, also the
InvokeRequiredcodes. But WPF is stringly typed, and binding errors just use aOn Error Resume Nextby default. Compiled WPF with the ViewModel not being merelyobjectbut defined by an interface or abstract/concrete class would solve most issues.WinForms has too much boilerplate code, and I miss layout containers (StackPanel, Grid, ...); and unfortunately, Mono is not really good at displaying WinForms on Linux desktop.
For the web, uhm, I don't know. I started playing with Razor, but I doubt that there will be a long future. And no idea of mobile at all.
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@Zecc said in More unified Windows GUI frameworks?:
What tech should a .NET coder use for a new Windows desktop app
None.
