4 ms·

I was really excited when I saw this because I thought someone had finally brought us a .net alternative to electron, using xaml. Unfortunately this seems to be

I was really excited when I saw this because I thought someone had finally brought us a .net alternative to electron, using xaml. Unfortunately this seems to be electron but with a .net webapp running in the background? You still need node and webkit for the UI it seems. If that's what this is, it was already possible to do with edge.js and electron so I'm not sure what advantage there is here.

cm2187 9y ago
Agree. To me the solution will be webassembly. I entertain the hope that there will be a .net runtime for webassembly, in which case you will be able to write a full cross platform application without having to write a line of JavaScript. Won’t be XAML+.net but will be HTML+.net.
- hacker_9 9y ago
  DOM interaction and Garbage Collectors are still a heavy research topic within the WebAssembly community, and aren't part of the MVP [1]. Plus MS would need to create a custom C# -> WASM compiler as they don't use LLVM internally. All this means you are probably going to be waiting at least another 5 years before you can compile .Net GUI apps straight to the web. [1] http://webassembly.org/docs/future-features/ http://webassembly.org/docs/future-features/
  - j_s 9y ago
    > C# -> WASM compiler https://github.com/kg/ilwasm/ https://github.com/kg/ilwasm/ [2015] Unfortunately, more proof of concept than anything
    - hacker_9 9y ago
      No doubt you'll find lots of attempts on github, but no business will touch it unless it's an offical compiler with Microsoft's backing, who continue to release updates and provide support for it.
- roryisok 9y ago
  Even web assembly would still require a full webkit / browser instance though. UWP or WPF apps that run XAML don't have a browser instance (unless they use webview) and the memory footprint is much much lower than the equivalent electron app. I'd like to see cross platform xaml so I can build a .net core app with a GUI that will run on Mac or Linux.
  - LemurMadness 9y ago
    It looks like there's two options for cross-platform XAML UIs: * Prism [1], which doesn't seem to support .NET Core. It was originally created by Microsoft Patterns & Practices, but then open sourced it. It's now community maintained. It looks like it's still being actively developed as there was a merge 4 days ago. * Avalonia [2], which supports .NET Core but is still in alpha. [1] https://github.com/PrismLibrary/Prism https://github.com/PrismLibrary/Prism [2] https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia
- ashark 9y ago
  Javascript's not the worst part of Electron (performance/size-wise). HTML+CSS is. See the imperfect, but much better, experience with React Native on mobile.
CodeCube 9y ago
https://www.xamarin.com/forms https://www.xamarin.com/forms Mac desktop support is in preview (https://blog.xamarin.com/preview-bringing-macos-to-xamarin-forms/ https://blog.xamarin.com/preview-bringing-macos-to-xamarin-f...), and Linux and WPF backends are in development. So ... almost there!
- roryisok 9y ago
  Wpf? Does that mean it might be possible to target windows 7?

cm2187 9y ago

Agree. To me the solution will be webassembly. I entertain the hope that there will be a .net runtime for webassembly, in which case you will be able to write a full cross platform application without having to write a line of JavaScript. Won’t be XAML+.net but will be HTML+.net.

hacker_9 9y ago
DOM interaction and Garbage Collectors are still a heavy research topic within the WebAssembly community, and aren't part of the MVP [1]. Plus MS would need to create a custom C# -> WASM compiler as they don't use LLVM internally. All this means you are probably going to be waiting at least another 5 years before you can compile .Net GUI apps straight to the web. [1] http://webassembly.org/docs/future-features/ http://webassembly.org/docs/future-features/
- j_s 9y ago
  > C# -> WASM compiler https://github.com/kg/ilwasm/ https://github.com/kg/ilwasm/ [2015] Unfortunately, more proof of concept than anything
  - hacker_9 9y ago
    No doubt you'll find lots of attempts on github, but no business will touch it unless it's an offical compiler with Microsoft's backing, who continue to release updates and provide support for it.
roryisok 9y ago
Even web assembly would still require a full webkit / browser instance though. UWP or WPF apps that run XAML don't have a browser instance (unless they use webview) and the memory footprint is much much lower than the equivalent electron app. I'd like to see cross platform xaml so I can build a .net core app with a GUI that will run on Mac or Linux.
- LemurMadness 9y ago
  It looks like there's two options for cross-platform XAML UIs: * Prism [1], which doesn't seem to support .NET Core. It was originally created by Microsoft Patterns & Practices, but then open sourced it. It's now community maintained. It looks like it's still being actively developed as there was a merge 4 days ago. * Avalonia [2], which supports .NET Core but is still in alpha. [1] https://github.com/PrismLibrary/Prism https://github.com/PrismLibrary/Prism [2] https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/Avalonia
ashark 9y ago
Javascript's not the worst part of Electron (performance/size-wise). HTML+CSS is. See the imperfect, but much better, experience with React Native on mobile.

CodeCube 9y ago

https://www.xamarin.com/forms https://www.xamarin.com/forms Mac desktop support is in preview (https://blog.xamarin.com/preview-bringing-macos-to-xamarin-forms/ https://blog.xamarin.com/preview-bringing-macos-to-xamarin-f...), and Linux and WPF backends are in development. So ... almost there!

roryisok 9y ago
Wpf? Does that mean it might be possible to target windows 7?