6 ms·

I was a fan of QT 20 years ago. These days I like to use .NET MAUI for cross platform apps.

zerr 3y ago
Why not Platform Uno or Avalonia? Was MAUI improved significantly recently? It was quite lacking, especially for desktop.
- DeathArrow 3y ago
  It is quite usable. Why not Uno or Avalonia? Because of better tooling, different concept, and more importantly, because MS has better resources to pull it of. Nancy FX was nice but most people used the Framework and it became the standard.
  - zerr 3y ago
    Got an impression that even if the mobile side is improved, Microsoft does not really care about the desktop support in MAUI.
- jmnicolas 3y ago
  Being a WPF dev, I like Avalonia but it doesn't even have a rich text box, so it's not as useful as it could be. They have a WPF compatibility thing but it's "enterprise" overpriced.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    It seems like a lot of the newer UI frameworks are weirdly lacking when it comes to a few highly functional widgets like that… UI-as-branding custom styled buttons are prioritized over rich textviews and tableviews/datagrids.
quietbritishjim 3y ago
My impression is that MAUI was released with a lot of fanfare but wasn't really ready (but that's just from articles I read, I haven't tried it myself). That's before even getting into lack of official Linux support. It then seems to have very little attention. It fits the classic Microsoft pattern of releasing a developer technology that doesn't quite work, then abandoning it before they ever finish it. For example, WinForms was meant to get hardware acceleration but, before then, was soft-deprecated in favour of WPF. It seems like that isn't your experience, is that right? I'm genuinely curious because I want to like MAUI – I'd love a cross platform (Windows, Mac, Linux), hardware accelerated, C# GUI toolkit (that works and is supported).
- spinningslate 3y ago
  > My impression is that MAUI was released with a lot of fanfare but wasn't really ready [...] >It fits the classic Microsoft pattern of releasing a developer technology that doesn't quite work, then abandoning it before they ever finish it. My sense is that MS is all-in on "web ui" (html/css/[js|ts]). Native apps don't fit with the commercial imperative to get as much compute happening in Azure as possible. The Windows desktop increasingly has just one purpose: to maximise the likelihood that the end consumer will use Microsoft's cloud, and not someone else's. The Desktop UI is now a bedraggled mix of several UI toolkit generations, with many built-in apps going all the way back to the original Win API. Microsoft's own headline apps - Office and Teams - have a web tech future. Teams started there, Office is going through a long, slow and somewhat painful migration. Windows is slowly becoming just a remote desktop. You don't need native apps on those.

zerr 3y ago

Why not Platform Uno or Avalonia? Was MAUI improved significantly recently? It was quite lacking, especially for desktop.

DeathArrow 3y ago
It is quite usable. Why not Uno or Avalonia? Because of better tooling, different concept, and more importantly, because MS has better resources to pull it of. Nancy FX was nice but most people used the Framework and it became the standard.
- zerr 3y ago
  Got an impression that even if the mobile side is improved, Microsoft does not really care about the desktop support in MAUI.
jmnicolas 3y ago
Being a WPF dev, I like Avalonia but it doesn't even have a rich text box, so it's not as useful as it could be. They have a WPF compatibility thing but it's "enterprise" overpriced.
- jwells89 3y ago
  It seems like a lot of the newer UI frameworks are weirdly lacking when it comes to a few highly functional widgets like that… UI-as-branding custom styled buttons are prioritized over rich textviews and tableviews/datagrids.

quietbritishjim 3y ago

My impression is that MAUI was released with a lot of fanfare but wasn't really ready (but that's just from articles I read, I haven't tried it myself). That's before even getting into lack of official Linux support. It then seems to have very little attention. It fits the classic Microsoft pattern of releasing a developer technology that doesn't quite work, then abandoning it before they ever finish it. For example, WinForms was meant to get hardware acceleration but, before then, was soft-deprecated in favour of WPF. It seems like that isn't your experience, is that right? I'm genuinely curious because I want to like MAUI – I'd love a cross platform (Windows, Mac, Linux), hardware accelerated, C# GUI toolkit (that works and is supported).

spinningslate 3y ago
> My impression is that MAUI was released with a lot of fanfare but wasn't really ready [...] >It fits the classic Microsoft pattern of releasing a developer technology that doesn't quite work, then abandoning it before they ever finish it. My sense is that MS is all-in on "web ui" (html/css/[js|ts]). Native apps don't fit with the commercial imperative to get as much compute happening in Azure as possible. The Windows desktop increasingly has just one purpose: to maximise the likelihood that the end consumer will use Microsoft's cloud, and not someone else's. The Desktop UI is now a bedraggled mix of several UI toolkit generations, with many built-in apps going all the way back to the original Win API. Microsoft's own headline apps - Office and Teams - have a web tech future. Teams started there, Office is going through a long, slow and somewhat painful migration. Windows is slowly becoming just a remote desktop. You don't need native apps on those.