3 ms·

Alternatively you can use WinUI within a WPF app using XAML Islands. Enables you to incrementally migrate away from WPF towards a WinUI 3-based app.

ripley12 5y ago
Down that path lies madness. Everyone I know who works with XAML Islands despises it. MS doesn't really push it because it's very broken.
- zogomoox 5y ago
  Starting any GUI app development on Windows is very frustrating right now.. Winforms (dead, ugly), WPF (nearly dead), UWP (deprecated), WinUI2 (deprecated), WinUI 3 (buggy, maybe in a year), .NET MAUI (also immature).
  - ripley12 5y ago
    Yeah, it's a mess. Personally I think web UI via WebView2 is the only way forward; Chromium is far and away the most powerful UI framework shipping with Windows these days. Even if "native" UI frameworks were doing everything right, it's hard to compete with all the investments in Chromium. P.S. WinForms isn't dead; it's maintained by the .NET team and it gets a lot more attention than WPF. But, well, it's WinForms :)
  - p1peridine 5y ago
    > Winforms (dead, ugly) Dead? Nonsense. WinForms is the most used technology/framework in 2021 for desktop GUI applications according to jetbrains. https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/csharp/ https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/csharp/ Also: https://blog.submain.com/death-winforms-greatly-exaggerated/ https://blog.submain.com/death-winforms-greatly-exaggerated/
    - georgemcbay 5y ago
      Dead and ugly are both kind of vague terms open for debate so I'm not arguing your main point here (and I'm not the person you responded to) ... ... but as someone who did a lot of Win32/UI App programming back in the late 1990s and early 2000s (up to and including early WinForms), I recently looked through the landscape of available UI toolkits and can confirm that as someone who hasn't been keeping up with this stuff for years its INCREDIBLY confusing as to what technology you should build new projects on looking through the graveyard of half abandoned aborted starts Microsoft seems to have made from back then until now, with almost everything being officially deprecated or early access/unfinished. The fact that WinForms might still be the best solution for starting a new project on is more of a condemnation of Microsoft's combined efforts in this area than it is something to be celebrated, IMO.
      - formerly_proven 5y ago
        Imagine the confusion of someone frozen in cryo around 2006 waking up now: Wait, that C# wrapper for Win32 is the recommended MS GUI framework? What went wrong?!
        oneplane 5y ago
        Not only that, but wrapping a deprecated framework at that... and then all the stuff that came in between. It's almost as if we're back at square one.
  - yakaccount4 5y ago
    Not to mention they change the aesthetic of the operating system seemingly ever 2 years.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    I still think Microsoft's best UI framework is the one they never promoted nor supported, WTL. It's just a shame about the C++ part. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Template_Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Template_Library
  - wiso 5y ago
    Did you try https://avaloniaui.net/ https://avaloniaui.net/ ?
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Add to the mess that for some stuff we are expected to add C++ to the mix, and C++/WinRT tooling is like going back to the good old ATL days in Visual C++ 6.0.

ripley12 5y ago

Down that path lies madness. Everyone I know who works with XAML Islands despises it. MS doesn't really push it because it's very broken.

zogomoox 5y ago
Starting any GUI app development on Windows is very frustrating right now.. Winforms (dead, ugly), WPF (nearly dead), UWP (deprecated), WinUI2 (deprecated), WinUI 3 (buggy, maybe in a year), .NET MAUI (also immature).
- ripley12 5y ago
  Yeah, it's a mess. Personally I think web UI via WebView2 is the only way forward; Chromium is far and away the most powerful UI framework shipping with Windows these days. Even if "native" UI frameworks were doing everything right, it's hard to compete with all the investments in Chromium. P.S. WinForms isn't dead; it's maintained by the .NET team and it gets a lot more attention than WPF. But, well, it's WinForms :)
- p1peridine 5y ago
  > Winforms (dead, ugly) Dead? Nonsense. WinForms is the most used technology/framework in 2021 for desktop GUI applications according to jetbrains. https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/csharp/ https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2021/csharp/ Also: https://blog.submain.com/death-winforms-greatly-exaggerated/ https://blog.submain.com/death-winforms-greatly-exaggerated/
  - georgemcbay 5y ago
    Dead and ugly are both kind of vague terms open for debate so I'm not arguing your main point here (and I'm not the person you responded to) ... ... but as someone who did a lot of Win32/UI App programming back in the late 1990s and early 2000s (up to and including early WinForms), I recently looked through the landscape of available UI toolkits and can confirm that as someone who hasn't been keeping up with this stuff for years its INCREDIBLY confusing as to what technology you should build new projects on looking through the graveyard of half abandoned aborted starts Microsoft seems to have made from back then until now, with almost everything being officially deprecated or early access/unfinished. The fact that WinForms might still be the best solution for starting a new project on is more of a condemnation of Microsoft's combined efforts in this area than it is something to be celebrated, IMO.
    - formerly_proven 5y ago
      Imagine the confusion of someone frozen in cryo around 2006 waking up now: Wait, that C# wrapper for Win32 is the recommended MS GUI framework? What went wrong?!
      - oneplane 5y ago
        Not only that, but wrapping a deprecated framework at that... and then all the stuff that came in between. It's almost as if we're back at square one.
- yakaccount4 5y ago
  Not to mention they change the aesthetic of the operating system seemingly ever 2 years.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  I still think Microsoft's best UI framework is the one they never promoted nor supported, WTL. It's just a shame about the C++ part. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Template_Library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Template_Library
- wiso 5y ago
  Did you try https://avaloniaui.net/ https://avaloniaui.net/ ?
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Add to the mess that for some stuff we are expected to add C++ to the mix, and C++/WinRT tooling is like going back to the good old ATL days in Visual C++ 6.0.