8 ms·

.NET 8 – MAUI

68 points by kumarvvr 3y ago

Vitamin_Sushi 3y ago
Nope, not falling for this again microsoft. Once you actually start dogfooding your own GUI frameworks, then I'll bite.
- amir734jj 3y ago
  Microsoft employee here. There is a lot of momentum behind MAUI so I am optimistic.
  - lawgimenez 3y ago
    Oh? I work for one of the largest jobs site in Asia. Maui has only one entry for the year 2023. Not sure what momentum are you talking about.
  - hackernate 3y ago
    Useful to know. So if I'm starting to build a new Windows app, what is Microsoft's recommendation? Should I use MAUI? (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/windows-dotnet-maui/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/windows-dotne...) Or WPF? (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/wpf/overview/?view=netdesktop-7.0 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/wpf/overvie...) Or WinForms? (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/overview/?view=netdesktop-7.0 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/ov...) Or WinUI 2? Or WinUI 3? (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/#comparison-of-winui-3-and-winui-2 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/#compar...) Or React Native for Windows? (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-environment/javascript/react-native-for-windows https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-environment/ja...) Or Blazor? (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blaz...) Or Win32? (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/desktop-programming https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/desktop-prog...) Or even Xamarin? (https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/xamarin/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/xamarin/) I feel like I might have missed a few... And how confident are you that my choice isn't going to be deprecated in a couple of years? I'm not certain that "momentum" is worth much from a company who changes UI frameworks as often as some people change underwear...
    - addicted 3y ago
      Rookie mistake. The answer is obviously Silverlight.
      - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
        No, win32 rules or maybe WTL or MFC or even Visual J++.
    - danielscrubs 3y ago
      I wonder why this is. Is it because management is asleep at the wheel? Is it because teams competes with each other without direction from the top? Is it because heavy rotation of leadership who doesnt know better? Any insiders?
      - oblio 3y ago
        https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/2011.06.27_organizational_charts.png https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/2011.06.27_o...
  - DANmode 3y ago
    > There is a lot of momentum behind MAUI Source?
  - bmitc 3y ago
    I'm not entirely sure. SkiaSharp is the driver behind all the 2D graphics, isn't it? But the SkiaSharp repo is effectively unmaintained except maybe to support critical things for MAUI.
    - ygra 3y ago
      SkiaSharp has some MAUI integration, but AFAIK it's not used to render things. At least not when I last looked. On most (all?) platforms native drawing methods are used (which fits well into how MAUI works on each platform, admittedly). This comes with the drawback that performance varies wildly across platforms, however. (NB: I've last looked deeply into MAUI about a year ago, so things may have changed.)
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - jiggawatts 3y ago
    There's like... zero momentum behind MAUI. The wider industry has learned their lesson and nobody in their right mind would ever use MAUI for a new GUI project unless Microsoft converts 80% of their applications to it. The only decent GUI framework for Windows is Electron, which is based on Chromium. Microsoft's new GUI applications use Electron: VS Code, Azure Data Studio, etc... In other words: Google makes the best Microsoft Windows GUI framework, as endorsed by Microsoft's own developers.
    - Xeamek 3y ago
      >The only decent GUI framework for Windows is Electron, which is based on Chromium. Why not avalonia?
      - braiamp 3y ago
        Ask that to Microsoft.
    - brtkdotse 3y ago
      > The only decent GUI framework for Windows is Electron What a peculiar way of spelling “WinForms”
    - heisgone 3y ago
      Well, Microsoft ditched Electron for their new version of Teams.
      - jiggawatts 3y ago
        The new framework for Teams is just an Edge-flavored version of Electron, not MAUI.
  - electroly 3y ago
    You're talking about momentum within Microsoft, I assume? There's no detectable momentum in the community at large. The ball hasn't even begun to roll. I have not heard or seen anyone using MAUI for anything serious so far. I've been writing Windows applications for 25 years at this point and am certainly not considering MAUI any time soon. They only just added keyboard accelerators--this is obviously not serious yet. To this day we are still writing Windows Forms applications. I'd consider embedding Blazor before I'd consider MAUI. Having lived through a lot of Microsoft GUI frameworks, I would say that I won't be fooled this easily. Not with another half-assed unfinished library. I'll be interested once it qualifies as whole-assed and not a moment sooner.
  - nobodyandproud 3y ago
    Use Outlook 365 and Teams School and Work to prove MAUI, then we’ll take it more seriously.
  - andydevguy 3y ago
    keep drinking that kool-aid.
  - lenkite 3y ago
    Which Microsoft Product is using MAUI ? Any MS Windows App being built in MAUI ?
    - oblio 3y ago
      Word, Excel, Outlook. Just kidding, it's probably some intern's dashboard that monitors their Clippy staging environments.
- kumarvvr 3y ago
  Maui is Open Source, MIT License https://github.com/dotnet/maui https://github.com/dotnet/maui .NET is Open Source https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/open-source https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/open-source I do share your skepticism of Microsoft, but it looks like the economics and cash flow dynamics have changed drastically after the advent of the cloud. Microsoft is more focused on getting developers onto its ecosystem and help them with open source projects with the hope that they will use its Azure cloud services and bring in the money. My skepticism is a bit relaxed now and I have no qualms using .NET. I hope I am not wrong.
  - sorwin 3y ago
    I think they may be referring to WPF, it promised so much, and it was great - then it was just left to die, and Microsoft moved on to MAUI
    - alternatex 3y ago
      Actually they moved onto UWP, then they moved onto WinUI 3. Now all this talk about MAUI but they have done zero dogfooding of it. People are sceptical of WinUI 3 but at least they used it in Windows 11.
  - Vitamin_Sushi 3y ago
    I love the fact that .NET and friends are open source, but my issue isn't with the licensing, it's with m$ funneling tons of resources on projects that (most likely) will end up being a dead end. I'd also love if maui actually takes off since it does seem pretty neat, but until microsoft uses it for teams or any other of their clients, I'll pass. They also aren't even targeting linux or web browsers, which doesn't really make this more compelling than Flutter.
    - dangus 3y ago
      .NET is used all over the place in Microsoft, including many Microsoft Teams services being migrated to .NET. Teams is listed on Microsoft’s .NET customers page. https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/customers https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/customers Teams was originally written before this particular release existed.
sheepscreek 3y ago
Can’t believe I’m saying this - the UI declarations look so readable in XML. Time for a quick trip down the memory lane. There was a period in 2000’s when XML use was at its peak. Everything was using XML. APIs were using SOAP transports (this was before REST became the de facto model). I used to loathe its verbosity in simple configuration files and wished for something simpler. Right around then, Douglas Crawford invented JSON - which really took off. The rest as they say, is history. We forget how well, markup languages like HTML and SVG can describe anything visual. Compared to the alternative (declarative object API, such as DOM or SwiftUI), I will take *ML any day. And given the popularity of React, I guess I am not alone.
- kumarvvr 3y ago
  I am surprised that XML gets a bad rap for any use, when HTML is just that. IMV, xml is an excellent format for declaring and wiring up user interfaces, much more so than any other technology. I only wish that we can build desktop applications directly with HTML, without any server running in the background.
  - eviks 3y ago
    and HTML also gets a bad rap for some of the <issues> same </issues>
    - kumarvvr 3y ago
      Really? I have never seen it in a meaningful way. Once developers started writing software to generate html, it has been a solid foundation for web UI.
- hliyan 3y ago
  I'm starting to notice this too. More readable than JSON in some cases, in fact. I suspect that while JSON is better for hierarchical data, well-designed XML is better for declarative portions of programs (e.g. UIs). This was actually quite comprehensible: <ContentPage.MenuBarItems> <MenuFlyoutItem Text="Cut" Clicked="OnCutMenuFlyoutItemClicked"> <MenuFlyoutItem.KeyboardAccelerators> <KeyboardAccelerator Modifiers="Ctrl" Key="X" /> </MenuFlyoutItem.KeyboardAccelerators> </MenuFlyoutItem> </ContentPage.MenuBarItems>
hbcondo714 3y ago
> create cross-platform applications for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows So MAUI still doesn't target the web like Expo and Flutter does?
- kumarvvr 3y ago
  They have Blazor and Asp.net for that. MAUI is for native apps on platforms.
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago
  Any combination of web, mobile and desktop is going to be too compromised.
- oaiey 3y ago
  MAUI is a cross-platform native control framework (like react native). They are currently not supporting self-rendered controls (there is some support in the codebase). Flutter is self-rendering (material style) with all the benefits (e.g. targeting a canvas, framebuffer, ...) and disadvantages (accessibility, reactivity, ...). If you prefer to be web-first (DOM, CSS) maybe Blazor Hybrid is the right tech which can deploy to Android, iOS, Browser, PWA, macOS or Windows might be your taste (like Cordova or Electron Shell for JS)
turkishmonky 3y ago
Without Linux support it's not cross platform.
Xeamek 3y ago
MAUI is (still?) A mobile-first framework, is it not? If I want to create a desktop only app with complex UI, is maui any good for that?
- kumarvvr 3y ago
  Looks like it. It is meant for native apps on mobile and desktops
- oaiey 3y ago
  Desktop IMHO only work with WinUI on Windows or iOS apps on macOS (that is a thing right?) However, complex is a thing. MAUI is a cross-platform native control framework (aka. it creates abstractions over platform native controls). Abstractions like standards are always the minimal common denominator. No specialized controls, not all properties exposed, etc. That is not really a issue of MAUI particular, but something to consider when selecting a UI toolkit (vs. self-rendering cross-platform frameworks like ionic or flutter). If you want to use the full capacity of a UI toolkit, you need to code against that code (and stop being cross-platform). You can do this with .NET (use Android, iOS, Windows ui toolkits directly).
monlockandkey 3y ago
I really struggled with MAUI. There were quite a few bugs. Hope it is better now but I would recommend native development
andydevguy 3y ago
The xml for building the UI gives me nightmares of Silverlight. I much prefer the way the Swift team has done it with SwiftUI. https://developer.apple.com/tutorials/swiftui-concepts/exploring-the-structure-of-a-swiftui-app https://developer.apple.com/tutorials/swiftui-concepts/explo...
- miffy900 3y ago
  SwiftUI is just it's own distinct nightmare, and only supported on one platform. MAUI is meant to be cross platform so it makes perfect sense to use a neutral language that isn't tied to a specific programming language.

.NET 8 – MAUI

68 points by kumarvvr 3y ago

Vitamin_Sushi 3y ago

Nope, not falling for this again microsoft. Once you actually start dogfooding your own GUI frameworks, then I'll bite.

amir734jj 3y ago
Microsoft employee here. There is a lot of momentum behind MAUI so I am optimistic.
- lawgimenez 3y ago
  Oh? I work for one of the largest jobs site in Asia. Maui has only one entry for the year 2023. Not sure what momentum are you talking about.
- hackernate 3y ago
  Useful to know. So if I'm starting to build a new Windows app, what is Microsoft's recommendation? Should I use MAUI? (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/windows-dotnet-maui/ https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/windows-dotne...) Or WPF? (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/wpf/overview/?view=netdesktop-7.0 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/wpf/overvie...) Or WinForms? (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/overview/?view=netdesktop-7.0 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/winforms/ov...) Or WinUI 2? Or WinUI 3? (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/#comparison-of-winui-3-and-winui-2 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/#compar...) Or React Native for Windows? (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-environment/javascript/react-native-for-windows https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dev-environment/ja...) Or Blazor? (https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blazor https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/apps/aspnet/web-apps/blaz...) Or Win32? (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/desktop-programming https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/desktop-prog...) Or even Xamarin? (https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/xamarin/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/xamarin/) I feel like I might have missed a few... And how confident are you that my choice isn't going to be deprecated in a couple of years? I'm not certain that "momentum" is worth much from a company who changes UI frameworks as often as some people change underwear...
  - addicted 3y ago
    Rookie mistake. The answer is obviously Silverlight.
    - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
      No, win32 rules or maybe WTL or MFC or even Visual J++.
  - danielscrubs 3y ago
    I wonder why this is. Is it because management is asleep at the wheel? Is it because teams competes with each other without direction from the top? Is it because heavy rotation of leadership who doesnt know better? Any insiders?
    - oblio 3y ago
      https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/2011.06.27_organizational_charts.png https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/2011.06.27_o...
- DANmode 3y ago
  > There is a lot of momentum behind MAUI Source?
- bmitc 3y ago
  I'm not entirely sure. SkiaSharp is the driver behind all the 2D graphics, isn't it? But the SkiaSharp repo is effectively unmaintained except maybe to support critical things for MAUI.
  - ygra 3y ago
    SkiaSharp has some MAUI integration, but AFAIK it's not used to render things. At least not when I last looked. On most (all?) platforms native drawing methods are used (which fits well into how MAUI works on each platform, admittedly). This comes with the drawback that performance varies wildly across platforms, however. (NB: I've last looked deeply into MAUI about a year ago, so things may have changed.)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  There's like... zero momentum behind MAUI. The wider industry has learned their lesson and nobody in their right mind would ever use MAUI for a new GUI project unless Microsoft converts 80% of their applications to it. The only decent GUI framework for Windows is Electron, which is based on Chromium. Microsoft's new GUI applications use Electron: VS Code, Azure Data Studio, etc... In other words: Google makes the best Microsoft Windows GUI framework, as endorsed by Microsoft's own developers.
  - Xeamek 3y ago
    >The only decent GUI framework for Windows is Electron, which is based on Chromium. Why not avalonia?
    - braiamp 3y ago
      Ask that to Microsoft.
  - brtkdotse 3y ago
    > The only decent GUI framework for Windows is Electron What a peculiar way of spelling “WinForms”
  - heisgone 3y ago
    Well, Microsoft ditched Electron for their new version of Teams.
    - jiggawatts 3y ago
      The new framework for Teams is just an Edge-flavored version of Electron, not MAUI.
- electroly 3y ago
  You're talking about momentum within Microsoft, I assume? There's no detectable momentum in the community at large. The ball hasn't even begun to roll. I have not heard or seen anyone using MAUI for anything serious so far. I've been writing Windows applications for 25 years at this point and am certainly not considering MAUI any time soon. They only just added keyboard accelerators--this is obviously not serious yet. To this day we are still writing Windows Forms applications. I'd consider embedding Blazor before I'd consider MAUI. Having lived through a lot of Microsoft GUI frameworks, I would say that I won't be fooled this easily. Not with another half-assed unfinished library. I'll be interested once it qualifies as whole-assed and not a moment sooner.
- nobodyandproud 3y ago
  Use Outlook 365 and Teams School and Work to prove MAUI, then we’ll take it more seriously.
- andydevguy 3y ago
  keep drinking that kool-aid.
- lenkite 3y ago
  Which Microsoft Product is using MAUI ? Any MS Windows App being built in MAUI ?
  - oblio 3y ago
    Word, Excel, Outlook. Just kidding, it's probably some intern's dashboard that monitors their Clippy staging environments.
kumarvvr 3y ago
Maui is Open Source, MIT License https://github.com/dotnet/maui https://github.com/dotnet/maui .NET is Open Source https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/open-source https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/open-source I do share your skepticism of Microsoft, but it looks like the economics and cash flow dynamics have changed drastically after the advent of the cloud. Microsoft is more focused on getting developers onto its ecosystem and help them with open source projects with the hope that they will use its Azure cloud services and bring in the money. My skepticism is a bit relaxed now and I have no qualms using .NET. I hope I am not wrong.
- sorwin 3y ago
  I think they may be referring to WPF, it promised so much, and it was great - then it was just left to die, and Microsoft moved on to MAUI
  - alternatex 3y ago
    Actually they moved onto UWP, then they moved onto WinUI 3. Now all this talk about MAUI but they have done zero dogfooding of it. People are sceptical of WinUI 3 but at least they used it in Windows 11.
- Vitamin_Sushi 3y ago
  I love the fact that .NET and friends are open source, but my issue isn't with the licensing, it's with m$ funneling tons of resources on projects that (most likely) will end up being a dead end. I'd also love if maui actually takes off since it does seem pretty neat, but until microsoft uses it for teams or any other of their clients, I'll pass. They also aren't even targeting linux or web browsers, which doesn't really make this more compelling than Flutter.
  - dangus 3y ago
    .NET is used all over the place in Microsoft, including many Microsoft Teams services being migrated to .NET. Teams is listed on Microsoft’s .NET customers page. https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/customers https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/platform/customers Teams was originally written before this particular release existed.

sheepscreek 3y ago

Can’t believe I’m saying this - the UI declarations look so readable in XML. Time for a quick trip down the memory lane. There was a period in 2000’s when XML use was at its peak. Everything was using XML. APIs were using SOAP transports (this was before REST became the de facto model). I used to loathe its verbosity in simple configuration files and wished for something simpler. Right around then, Douglas Crawford invented JSON - which really took off. The rest as they say, is history. We forget how well, markup languages like HTML and SVG can describe anything visual. Compared to the alternative (declarative object API, such as DOM or SwiftUI), I will take *ML any day. And given the popularity of React, I guess I am not alone.

kumarvvr 3y ago
I am surprised that XML gets a bad rap for any use, when HTML is just that. IMV, xml is an excellent format for declaring and wiring up user interfaces, much more so than any other technology. I only wish that we can build desktop applications directly with HTML, without any server running in the background.
- eviks 3y ago
  and HTML also gets a bad rap for some of the <issues> same </issues>
  - kumarvvr 3y ago
    Really? I have never seen it in a meaningful way. Once developers started writing software to generate html, it has been a solid foundation for web UI.
hliyan 3y ago
I'm starting to notice this too. More readable than JSON in some cases, in fact. I suspect that while JSON is better for hierarchical data, well-designed XML is better for declarative portions of programs (e.g. UIs). This was actually quite comprehensible: <ContentPage.MenuBarItems> <MenuFlyoutItem Text="Cut" Clicked="OnCutMenuFlyoutItemClicked"> <MenuFlyoutItem.KeyboardAccelerators> <KeyboardAccelerator Modifiers="Ctrl" Key="X" /> </MenuFlyoutItem.KeyboardAccelerators> </MenuFlyoutItem> </ContentPage.MenuBarItems>

hbcondo714 3y ago

> create cross-platform applications for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows So MAUI still doesn't target the web like Expo and Flutter does?

kumarvvr 3y ago
They have Blazor and Asp.net for that. MAUI is for native apps on platforms.
tonyedgecombe 3y ago
Any combination of web, mobile and desktop is going to be too compromised.
oaiey 3y ago
MAUI is a cross-platform native control framework (like react native). They are currently not supporting self-rendered controls (there is some support in the codebase). Flutter is self-rendering (material style) with all the benefits (e.g. targeting a canvas, framebuffer, ...) and disadvantages (accessibility, reactivity, ...). If you prefer to be web-first (DOM, CSS) maybe Blazor Hybrid is the right tech which can deploy to Android, iOS, Browser, PWA, macOS or Windows might be your taste (like Cordova or Electron Shell for JS)

turkishmonky 3y ago

Without Linux support it's not cross platform.

Xeamek 3y ago

MAUI is (still?) A mobile-first framework, is it not? If I want to create a desktop only app with complex UI, is maui any good for that?

kumarvvr 3y ago
Looks like it. It is meant for native apps on mobile and desktops
oaiey 3y ago
Desktop IMHO only work with WinUI on Windows or iOS apps on macOS (that is a thing right?) However, complex is a thing. MAUI is a cross-platform native control framework (aka. it creates abstractions over platform native controls). Abstractions like standards are always the minimal common denominator. No specialized controls, not all properties exposed, etc. That is not really a issue of MAUI particular, but something to consider when selecting a UI toolkit (vs. self-rendering cross-platform frameworks like ionic or flutter). If you want to use the full capacity of a UI toolkit, you need to code against that code (and stop being cross-platform). You can do this with .NET (use Android, iOS, Windows ui toolkits directly).

monlockandkey 3y ago

I really struggled with MAUI. There were quite a few bugs. Hope it is better now but I would recommend native development

andydevguy 3y ago

The xml for building the UI gives me nightmares of Silverlight. I much prefer the way the Swift team has done it with SwiftUI. https://developer.apple.com/tutorials/swiftui-concepts/exploring-the-structure-of-a-swiftui-app https://developer.apple.com/tutorials/swiftui-concepts/explo...

miffy900 3y ago
SwiftUI is just it's own distinct nightmare, and only supported on one platform. MAUI is meant to be cross platform so it makes perfect sense to use a neutral language that isn't tied to a specific programming language.