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Now as .Net becomes more interesting again (for me), can someone comment on the state of GUI app development in .Net? Can I write cross-platform GUI code, or w

Now as .Net becomes more interesting again (for me), can someone comment on the state of GUI app development in .Net? Can I write cross-platform GUI code, or would I need to re-implement the GUI on every platform? Do Windows .Net GUI apps (does that mean Windows.Forms?) work just as-is on Linux (and maybe MacOSX)? What would be the best supported GUI .Net framework? QtSharp? Windows.Forms? I found some overview here, but not sure if accurate / up-to-date: http://www.mono-project.com/docs/gui/ http://www.mono-project.com/docs/gui/

floatboth 12y ago
WinForms works on Mono (but looks like ass). WPF doesn't. The best way is probably Gtk#.
- barrkel 12y ago
  As someone who tried to use WinForms on Mono on Linux, I'll save everyone who tries a few hours evaluation work: don't waste your time. Text components in particular are very broken. Text selection, context menu, copy and paste, cursor movement, rendering, it's all very shaky. Use Gtk# on Linux.
- praeclarum 12y ago
  In terms of maturity and feature-completeness, GTK# is the answer. Unfortunately, it's no beauty either. Especially on Mac it does its own control rendering and, while it tries to match the OS, has problems. XWT was meant to replace GTK# and has some good underpinnings but it doesn't seem super active right now.
adolfojp 12y ago
Cross platform .NET usually means using a native toolkit on each different platform and the result is WPF on Windows, GTK# on Linux, and MonoMac on Mac. The purpose of this is to avoid the uncanny valley of cross platform toolkits like Java Swing at the expense of writing extra UI code. Some wrappers like Eto.Forms and XWT exist but don't expect drag and drop visual designer tooling. Thanks to Mono WinForms is sort of cross platform to a certain extent but if you give it a try you'll see why it is not recommended.
- jbigelow76 12y ago
  >Cross platform .NET usually means using a native toolkit on each different platform and the result is WPF on Windows, GTK# on Linux, and MonoMac on Mac. What are the odds Microsoft announces WPF open sourcing and maybe a wrapper of some sorts for OSX support at Build this year? I give it at least 50/50 on the open sourcing part.
  - c0wb0yc0d3r 12y ago
    If they did that I would be so happy! I think if they did that it would set the CLR up to effectively compete with Java.
  - praeclarum 12y ago
    AFAIK WPF is managed by the Windows team. All this open sourcing has been happening form the Azure and developer teams. Chances of Windows open sourcing some of their code? Less likely. As someone who worked on WPF though, I will comment that the code may not actually be too useful. It is heavily tied to Windows and its graphics infrastructure. I'm more interested in seeing something like Moonlight ported to modern platforms.
  - elektronjunge 12y ago
    Doubtful. WPF isn't even the recommended GUI toolkit on windows anymore.
    - jbigelow76 12y ago
      According to whom? And what is the current recommended GUI toolkit?
      - praeclarum 12y ago
        Windows RT (aka Metro, aka Store Apps). It's a model based on WPF but not fully compliant - it took in lessons learned form Silverlight. Call it WPFlight.
merlish 12y ago
I've been messing with Eto.Forms recently. You define everything through code (or optionally in a JSON blob) rather than in a designer, and it tries to use native controls to display your design. It's pretty solid and easy to use and I'm quite happy with it. If you want an exquisite, beautifully-designed OS X app then you should be looking into having separate frontends per platform anyway, but having tried Eto I find it fits my needs. It's much better than I expected.
snarfy 12y ago
Windows.Forms works. RepetierHost is an example of a cross platform mono forms app. These days I lean towards web services and using the browser as the GUI.
Romoku 12y ago
Take a look at XWT[1]. It uses the native rendering on each platform. [1]: https://github.com/mono/xwt https://github.com/mono/xwt
jongalloway2 12y ago
For mobile forms-based applications, Xamarin.Forms looks pretty good: http://xamarin.com/forms http://xamarin.com/forms For cross-platform desktop applications, I've been keeping an eye on Perspex: https://github.com/grokys/Perspex https://github.com/grokys/Perspex

floatboth 12y ago

WinForms works on Mono (but looks like ass). WPF doesn't. The best way is probably Gtk#.

barrkel 12y ago
As someone who tried to use WinForms on Mono on Linux, I'll save everyone who tries a few hours evaluation work: don't waste your time. Text components in particular are very broken. Text selection, context menu, copy and paste, cursor movement, rendering, it's all very shaky. Use Gtk# on Linux.
praeclarum 12y ago
In terms of maturity and feature-completeness, GTK# is the answer. Unfortunately, it's no beauty either. Especially on Mac it does its own control rendering and, while it tries to match the OS, has problems. XWT was meant to replace GTK# and has some good underpinnings but it doesn't seem super active right now.

adolfojp 12y ago

Cross platform .NET usually means using a native toolkit on each different platform and the result is WPF on Windows, GTK# on Linux, and MonoMac on Mac. The purpose of this is to avoid the uncanny valley of cross platform toolkits like Java Swing at the expense of writing extra UI code. Some wrappers like Eto.Forms and XWT exist but don't expect drag and drop visual designer tooling. Thanks to Mono WinForms is sort of cross platform to a certain extent but if you give it a try you'll see why it is not recommended.

jbigelow76 12y ago
>Cross platform .NET usually means using a native toolkit on each different platform and the result is WPF on Windows, GTK# on Linux, and MonoMac on Mac. What are the odds Microsoft announces WPF open sourcing and maybe a wrapper of some sorts for OSX support at Build this year? I give it at least 50/50 on the open sourcing part.
- c0wb0yc0d3r 12y ago
  If they did that I would be so happy! I think if they did that it would set the CLR up to effectively compete with Java.
- praeclarum 12y ago
  AFAIK WPF is managed by the Windows team. All this open sourcing has been happening form the Azure and developer teams. Chances of Windows open sourcing some of their code? Less likely. As someone who worked on WPF though, I will comment that the code may not actually be too useful. It is heavily tied to Windows and its graphics infrastructure. I'm more interested in seeing something like Moonlight ported to modern platforms.
- elektronjunge 12y ago
  Doubtful. WPF isn't even the recommended GUI toolkit on windows anymore.
  - jbigelow76 12y ago
    According to whom? And what is the current recommended GUI toolkit?
    - praeclarum 12y ago
      Windows RT (aka Metro, aka Store Apps). It's a model based on WPF but not fully compliant - it took in lessons learned form Silverlight. Call it WPFlight.

merlish 12y ago

I've been messing with Eto.Forms recently. You define everything through code (or optionally in a JSON blob) rather than in a designer, and it tries to use native controls to display your design. It's pretty solid and easy to use and I'm quite happy with it. If you want an exquisite, beautifully-designed OS X app then you should be looking into having separate frontends per platform anyway, but having tried Eto I find it fits my needs. It's much better than I expected.

snarfy 12y ago

Windows.Forms works. RepetierHost is an example of a cross platform mono forms app. These days I lean towards web services and using the browser as the GUI.

Romoku 12y ago

Take a look at XWT[1]. It uses the native rendering on each platform. [1]: https://github.com/mono/xwt https://github.com/mono/xwt

jongalloway2 12y ago

For mobile forms-based applications, Xamarin.Forms looks pretty good: http://xamarin.com/forms http://xamarin.com/forms For cross-platform desktop applications, I've been keeping an eye on Perspex: https://github.com/grokys/Perspex https://github.com/grokys/Perspex