Building amazing multi-platform solutions for iOS, Android, Mac, Linux and Windows
In the past three posts about working with AI on Windows, we covered connecting to Phi Silica, getting progress response, and building a chat experience. In this post we’re going to improve the styling of the chat by using data templates and including a system message to setup the chat interaction. At the end of the previous … Read more
Earlier this month Microsoft introduced the preview of Microsoft.Extensions.AI.Abstractions and Microsoft.Extensions.AI libraries with the aim of making it easier for .NET developers to integrate AI services into their applications. The Uno Platform provides support for using Microsoft.Extensions in applications that target Windows and any other Uno Platform target (iOS, Android, MacCatalyst etc) via the Uno.Extensions … Read more
In today’s digital world, integrating AI into your applications has become increasingly important. One powerful AI model that you can leverage is OpenAI’s GPT, known for its natural language processing capabilities. In this blog post, we’ll guide you through the process of connecting your Windows app to ChatGPT using the Microsoft Azure.AI.OpenAI library, allowing you … Read more
In my previous post I covered Dependency Injection for Windows and Uno Platform Applications which covered creating a new application and adding dependency injection using the Uno.Extensions which leverages the Microsoft Extensions IHostBuilder to create an IHost instance. In this post we’re going to adjust the IHostBuilder to setup Logging support. We’re going to start … Read more
In the next few posts we’re going to be looking at the TubePlayer sample application for the Uno Platform. For this post we’re going to focus on using Uno.Extensions to add dependency injection to an Uno Platform application. Uno.Extensions builds on the awesome work that Microsoft has done with the Microsoft.Extensions that provides capabilities such … Read more
Just over a week ago the Uno Platform released v5.0 which was another significant update, following the 4.10 release that included Adding .NET MAUI Controls to an Existing Uno-Platform Application, and some awesome support for shadows. In this post we’re going to do a wrap up of the release and look at trajectory of the platform. … Read more
In the past three posts (Getting Started, Comparison with MVVM and Incremental Loading) I’ve talked about the use of Model-View-Update-eXtended (MVUX). In this post we’re going look at feeds, which is one of the key components of MVUX. What’s a Feed In simple terms, a feed represents a stream of values, much like an Observable … Read more
One of the things that sets WinUI apart from other UI frameworks is that provides a declarative way to define visual states for a control or a page. It also allows for the transitions between states to be defined. In this post we’re going to cover how to define both transitions and state animations and … Read more
Microsoft just shipped v1.2 of the Windows App SDK, which includes support for creating third-party Widgets for Windows. During the previews, it was understood that there was a limitation that the widget provider (i.e. the functionality of the widget) needs to be developed using C++. However, this changed and the final release included support for … Read more
In writing my previous post on Implicit and Explicit Styles in XAML I was reminded of a bug in the definition of the DefaultButtonStyle which prevents you setting the Foreground colour of a Button. The issue is documented, along with the fix, in this issue but for whatever reason (and I can’t think of one … Read more
One of the questions that came up recently was how to make what appears to be a simple change to a Button – change the background colour of the Button to Red when it’s disabled. You’d think this would be simply a matter of changing a property on the Button but for most flavours of … Read more
The .NET Maui team at Microsoft recently dropped Release Candidate 1, so I thought it worth taking a quick look at how it compares to both it’s predecessor, Xamarin.Forms, and the Uno Platform, which is arguably the market leader for building multi-platform application with .NET. If you missed the announcement by Microsoft, here’s a tweet … Read more
Code sample for this post is on GitHub: AppWindowSample One of the more significant differences between building apps for mobile devices, such as iOS and Android, and desktop pcs (Windows or Mac) is the concept of windows. On a mobile device, your app typically runs full screen, or perhaps split screen on some devices, so … Read more