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Does anyone have a prediction when .NET Core will be extended to include UI? I find this lack is the most confounding aspect of MSFTs strategy. Is Xamarin rea

Does anyone have a prediction when .NET Core will be extended to include UI? I find this lack is the most confounding aspect of MSFTs strategy. Is Xamarin really it?

mattkrea 10y ago
I'm pretty sure you'll be waiting a while. The GUI elements are tied very deep into core of Windows AFAIK.
- bunderbunder 10y ago
  They are for WinForms and WinRT, but not so much for WPF. That one's closely related to Silverlight, which also runs on other platforms. I doubt WPF is going to make a big comeback, though.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    WPF is still the way to go for many desktop enterprise apps. Thankfully there are still plenty of use cases not covered by web UIs.
mythz 10y ago
MSFT strategy is to develop a lightweight, cross-platform .NET runtime that can be hosted on Linux/Windows on Azure - that's where their ROI lies and where their .NET Core investments are focused. Their mobile/cloud approach is about using Xamarin to develop iOS/Android Apps that connect to backend Services hosted on Azure. Although they won't mind if you use Swift or Java to develop native iOS Apps or deploy on Linux - just as long as you host your backend Services on Azure. There's very little incentive for them to invest in making a cross-platform Desktop UI, most x-plat UI's suck and requires significant resources and offer little return given the most popular UI's are either Web/Mobile - which they've already got covered. I'd expect the most likely UI for .NET Core is to host a .NET Core runtime with a cross-platform web-based shell using something like Electron or CEF.
pjmlp 10y ago
You need to think of .NET Core as libc. It is a standard .NET base that maps to and updates the ECMA standard in a portable way. Anything else is supposed to be made available via NuGET packages.
michigans 10y ago
I would say never. Microsoft acknowledged that using windows as a server is a big handicap for many companies. Making server-side .net components cross platform allows some to use their stack and maybe purchase other products like sql server. However, the last thing microsoft wants is to make it possible for popular applications and games to run on other OSes. Hey, they need to sell you windows licenses.

Does anyone have a prediction when .NET Core will be extended to include UI? I find this lack is the most confounding aspect of MSFTs strategy. Is Xamarin really it?

mattkrea 10y ago

I'm pretty sure you'll be waiting a while. The GUI elements are tied very deep into core of Windows AFAIK.

bunderbunder 10y ago
They are for WinForms and WinRT, but not so much for WPF. That one's closely related to Silverlight, which also runs on other platforms. I doubt WPF is going to make a big comeback, though.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  WPF is still the way to go for many desktop enterprise apps. Thankfully there are still plenty of use cases not covered by web UIs.

mythz 10y ago

MSFT strategy is to develop a lightweight, cross-platform .NET runtime that can be hosted on Linux/Windows on Azure - that's where their ROI lies and where their .NET Core investments are focused. Their mobile/cloud approach is about using Xamarin to develop iOS/Android Apps that connect to backend Services hosted on Azure. Although they won't mind if you use Swift or Java to develop native iOS Apps or deploy on Linux - just as long as you host your backend Services on Azure. There's very little incentive for them to invest in making a cross-platform Desktop UI, most x-plat UI's suck and requires significant resources and offer little return given the most popular UI's are either Web/Mobile - which they've already got covered. I'd expect the most likely UI for .NET Core is to host a .NET Core runtime with a cross-platform web-based shell using something like Electron or CEF.

pjmlp 10y ago

You need to think of .NET Core as libc. It is a standard .NET base that maps to and updates the ECMA standard in a portable way. Anything else is supposed to be made available via NuGET packages.

michigans 10y ago

I would say never. Microsoft acknowledged that using windows as a server is a big handicap for many companies. Making server-side .net components cross platform allows some to use their stack and maybe purchase other products like sql server. However, the last thing microsoft wants is to make it possible for popular applications and games to run on other OSes. Hey, they need to sell you windows licenses.