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Presumably because, much like the half-dozen other flexible cross-platform frameworks Microsoft and friends have gotten one-third of the way to a viable product

Presumably because, much like the half-dozen other flexible cross-platform frameworks Microsoft and friends have gotten one-third of the way to a viable product before abandoning to chase the next shiny thing, it's riddled with bugs, about ten years behind the documentation of a more usable framework from the 2010s, and has basically zero third party support from the likes of Infragistics and SyncFusion. UWP left behind a shockingly large number of perfectly serviceable pieces of WPF, at a time when the emergent UI experience on Windows 8 was being written off by almost everyone, Windows Phone was DoA, and people were starting to realize they could just write web pages and run GUIs in the browser instead. It's been a long, bumpy, downhill ride ever since. The fact that Electron.NET and Blazor is a serious UI suggestion from Microsoft these days should tell you everything you need to know. I'm sure with enough effort it's usable and maybe even nice in some ways. I did some proof-of-concept work with it two years ago and got maybe 50% of the way to where I wanted to be in 8 hours, but got stuck at styling issues for which there was limited documentation. In the end, I'm more confident these days in WPF + Avalonia if I really need cross-platform - even if there's comparable bugs and limited documentation, there's at least some momentum still behind the project. UWP, all three busted half-finished versions of WinUI, MAUI, Blazor + Webview2, Blazor + Electron.NET... even Avalonia, thanks to the weird decision to change styles to behave more like CSS... it all still struggles to be as usable as WPF.

pjmlp 2y ago
As someone that went from a strong advocate of UWP, into a strong critic of UWP. They really messed up WinRT. Although not perfect at Windows 8 launch, its evolution until Project Reunion came to be had potential. It was .NET as it should have been from day one, a proper developer friendly wrapper on top of COM, and Microsoft had finally provided something comparable to C++ Builder for the C++ crowd. Instead they never delivered feature parity to WPF, killed .NET Native, C++/CX, the designer, and then started from scratch on Win32 side, while expecting everyone jump to put up with them, and follow for the ride. I consider that an ultimately lack of respect for paying customers.
- zerkten 2y ago
  C++ Builder fan from my early career. Did they add designer/XAML support for C++ and then kill it? Do you have to do C++ dev with code only now?
dtquad 2y ago
Why do people always complain about the lack of mature cross platform desktop GUI development options for .Net? Most other programming languages and ecosystems don't even have viable options for desktop GUI development. When was the last time a new version of Elixir, Ruby, Go or Rust was released and top comment was complaining about the state of desktop GUI development options? The whole industry is unfortunately moving towards web interfaces being the default. That is unfortunate but it is an industry wide trend.
- vunderba 2y ago
  Elixir, Ruby, Go?? Maybe because the C/C++ and JavaScript/Typescript user bases are about 10000 times larger and we have relatively robust cross platform UI solutions for both in the forms of QT and Electron. C# is a weird outlier for having a very large user base but very few decent cross-platform GUI support.
  - Kwpolska 2y ago
    C#'s user base was historically tied to Windows, and there are many C# GUI frameworks for Windows.
    - orphea 2y ago
      I, being a .NET developer since v1.1, won't touch most of them. WPF, a framework from 2006, and Avalonia, a 3rd party framework, are the only two worth considering.
      - irq-1 2y ago
        Thank you for this comment. Trying to sort through the mess of GUI frameworks for .NET and other languages is difficult.
      - memsom 2y ago
        Six months ago I would have argued with you, but currently doing a MAUI transition from a Xamarin Forms app, and you are very right. I wish Avalonia UI's mobile solution had had Navigation sorted a year ago when I proposed that we needed to do something with the XF EOL announcement. I had a POC with it working well enough, but sadly it was "too much work" to migrate the rest of the app. Now with MAUI we have realised that we are probably doing just as much work anyway, and it is seriously half baked as an ecosystem.
neonsunset 2y ago
This project is not related to UWP. Is there actionable feedback you could provide to it?
- ejiblabahaba 2y ago
  For Uno specifically: I do like the attempt to build out a WASM target, it looks usable. Uno looks to be in a lot better state internally than even two years ago, which is promising - that's one thing I can't get out of either WPF or Avalonia. Key things that need to improve: - Documentation appears to have gotten better in the last few years, but still many sparse or underdocumented corners. This is my biggest reservation today. - When I last used it (a few years ago), a lot of things weren't fully implemented - maybe this has changed? But it added a lot of friction.
billfruit 2y ago
It's become a morass. Did they ever get back to atleast where Xamarin was like 5 years ago? Why exactly is Microsoft doing this, it all sounds very shambolic, the approach they chose and the outcomes. I think this space needs some stability, and Microsoft seems keen on inducing volatility for some reason.
- chubs 2y ago
  Here’s the reason: the LPA cycle, unfortunately. https://twitter.com/buccocapital/status/1576909546164928513 https://twitter.com/buccocapital/status/1576909546164928513
- m_fayer 2y ago
  I think Avalonia is finally emerging as a partial way out of the morass, a qt-for.net. And why? Because it’s from the ground up, and not from Microsoft.
datavirtue 2y ago
WPF is a joy.
dgellow 2y ago
As someone who seriously tried pretty much all the mentioned tools to develop modern windows applications I feel this comment sums up everything perfectly. WPF is still the most usable solution. I really wanted to like UWP, then WinUI, but for anything that isn’t a simple demo project you end up spending all your time fighting the framework and facing broken/unpolished parts that make you feel pain and frustration. Avalonia isn’t perfect and has some rough edges but I would still consider it for cross platform support over anything else.

pjmlp 2y ago

As someone that went from a strong advocate of UWP, into a strong critic of UWP. They really messed up WinRT. Although not perfect at Windows 8 launch, its evolution until Project Reunion came to be had potential. It was .NET as it should have been from day one, a proper developer friendly wrapper on top of COM, and Microsoft had finally provided something comparable to C++ Builder for the C++ crowd. Instead they never delivered feature parity to WPF, killed .NET Native, C++/CX, the designer, and then started from scratch on Win32 side, while expecting everyone jump to put up with them, and follow for the ride. I consider that an ultimately lack of respect for paying customers.

zerkten 2y ago
C++ Builder fan from my early career. Did they add designer/XAML support for C++ and then kill it? Do you have to do C++ dev with code only now?

dtquad 2y ago

Why do people always complain about the lack of mature cross platform desktop GUI development options for .Net? Most other programming languages and ecosystems don't even have viable options for desktop GUI development. When was the last time a new version of Elixir, Ruby, Go or Rust was released and top comment was complaining about the state of desktop GUI development options? The whole industry is unfortunately moving towards web interfaces being the default. That is unfortunate but it is an industry wide trend.

vunderba 2y ago
Elixir, Ruby, Go?? Maybe because the C/C++ and JavaScript/Typescript user bases are about 10000 times larger and we have relatively robust cross platform UI solutions for both in the forms of QT and Electron. C# is a weird outlier for having a very large user base but very few decent cross-platform GUI support.
- Kwpolska 2y ago
  C#'s user base was historically tied to Windows, and there are many C# GUI frameworks for Windows.
  - orphea 2y ago
    I, being a .NET developer since v1.1, won't touch most of them. WPF, a framework from 2006, and Avalonia, a 3rd party framework, are the only two worth considering.
    - irq-1 2y ago
      Thank you for this comment. Trying to sort through the mess of GUI frameworks for .NET and other languages is difficult.
    - memsom 2y ago
      Six months ago I would have argued with you, but currently doing a MAUI transition from a Xamarin Forms app, and you are very right. I wish Avalonia UI's mobile solution had had Navigation sorted a year ago when I proposed that we needed to do something with the XF EOL announcement. I had a POC with it working well enough, but sadly it was "too much work" to migrate the rest of the app. Now with MAUI we have realised that we are probably doing just as much work anyway, and it is seriously half baked as an ecosystem.

neonsunset 2y ago

This project is not related to UWP. Is there actionable feedback you could provide to it?

ejiblabahaba 2y ago
For Uno specifically: I do like the attempt to build out a WASM target, it looks usable. Uno looks to be in a lot better state internally than even two years ago, which is promising - that's one thing I can't get out of either WPF or Avalonia. Key things that need to improve: - Documentation appears to have gotten better in the last few years, but still many sparse or underdocumented corners. This is my biggest reservation today. - When I last used it (a few years ago), a lot of things weren't fully implemented - maybe this has changed? But it added a lot of friction.

billfruit 2y ago

It's become a morass. Did they ever get back to atleast where Xamarin was like 5 years ago? Why exactly is Microsoft doing this, it all sounds very shambolic, the approach they chose and the outcomes. I think this space needs some stability, and Microsoft seems keen on inducing volatility for some reason.

chubs 2y ago
Here’s the reason: the LPA cycle, unfortunately. https://twitter.com/buccocapital/status/1576909546164928513 https://twitter.com/buccocapital/status/1576909546164928513
m_fayer 2y ago
I think Avalonia is finally emerging as a partial way out of the morass, a qt-for.net. And why? Because it’s from the ground up, and not from Microsoft.

datavirtue 2y ago

WPF is a joy.

dgellow 2y ago

As someone who seriously tried pretty much all the mentioned tools to develop modern windows applications I feel this comment sums up everything perfectly. WPF is still the most usable solution. I really wanted to like UWP, then WinUI, but for anything that isn’t a simple demo project you end up spending all your time fighting the framework and facing broken/unpolished parts that make you feel pain and frustration. Avalonia isn’t perfect and has some rough edges but I would still consider it for cross platform support over anything else.