Building amazing multi-platform solutions for iOS, Android, Mac, Linux and Windows
One of the most annoying “features” of both UWP and WinUI/ProjectReunion WindowsAppSDK apps is the need to generate a package. With UWP development, the packaging was built into the UWP project. However, with the WindowsAppSDK, a separate packaging project is currently required. In this post we’re going to walk through how you can remove this … Read more
Last night / this morning I sat through one of the most professional and well executed series of non-live presentations from Microsoft covering Windows 11 and all the great features / tools that are coming for developers. In this post I’m going to cover some of the points that I took away from the sessions, … Read more
As a true demonstration of the capabilities of the Uno Platform the Nuget Package Explorer (source on GitHub / Microsoft Store) is now available at https://nuget.info. For more information read the announcement. One thing that’s not immediately obvious is that https://nuget.info is in fact a PWA. In Edge (and Chrome) you should see an icon … Read more
There’s a bit of fanfare going on at the moment because Microsoft have released the first preview of Visual Studio 2022 (announcement / download) which is significant because this is the first version of Visual Studio which will be 64bit. Note, this isn’t the first version that supports 64bit development, it’s the first version where … Read more
I’ve covered this a couple of times already but it’s already possible to run a Windows UI (aka WinUI / Project Reunion) app as “partial trust”. This is roughly equivalent to the security context of a UWP application. However, there are some difference, which I’m assuming Microsoft will have to bridge if they’re going to … Read more
In the last couple of years we’ve seen a massive spike in interest around “Hot Reload” thanks to the popularity of frameworks such as React/React Native and more recently, Flutter. The goal of Hot Reload is to allow developers to iteratively change their application code, whilst debugging their application – this cuts down considerably the … Read more
In a number of my previous posts I’ve challenged the need for Windows UI (WinUI3) to continue to support UWP. In nearly every instance I get push back from the community regarding all the features that are missing from Project Reunion and that UWP needs to be the future – but why I ask? wah, … Read more
There are a bunch of loyal UWP developers that are complaining because Project Reunion / WinUI isn’t available for UWP but have they really taken a step back and understood what they’re asking for. Let’s break this down a little and understand why WinUI for UWP shouldn’t exist (and why there are political reasons why … Read more
If you look at what Microsoft is working on with Project Reunion, it’s clear to see that they’ve set a vision to reunite the various groups of Windows developers. The aim is not to have every developer using exactly the same technology stack but rather to give every developer access to the richness of the … Read more
With the recent release of Windows UI and support for cross platform offered by the Uno Platform, it’s going to take a little while for the various UWP libraries that we’re familiar with to be ported across. They firstly need to be ported to Windows UI and then they need a Uno build. The Uno … Read more
In my previous post, Multi-Platform PixelPerfect UI with Windows UI and the Uno Platform, I demonstrated how applications built using Project Reunion (i.e. Windows UI), coupled with the Uno Platform, could deliver an identical user experience across a variety of platforms. In this post I’m going to walk through changing the style of one of … Read more
As we progress through the various previews of .NET 6 it’s great to see the transition happening from Xamarin.Forms to dotnet MAUI. The other day, James Montemagno tweeted out an image that showcases the same application running on iOS, Android, MacOS and Windows (which is now based on WinUI Desktop!). This tweet inspired me to … Read more
Two years ago I posted on Getting Started with Platform Uno which focused on starting with a UWP application and extending it cross platform using the Uno Platform. For those tracking developments in the Windows development space, you’ll be aware that the 0.5 version of Project Reunion has just been released. It seem fitting to … Read more
As the first release of Windows UI 3.0 is imminent, there’s a bit of a dialogue going on about its relationship with the parent project, Project Reunion. More specifically the conversations focus on topics like naming, versioning and release planning. In this post I’m going to touch on these topics and provide my thoughts on … Read more
Here’s the upshot – if you’ve been watching the Windows developer space, the hot topic at the moment is Project Reunion, which includes Windows UI and will form the building blocks for apps targeting the Windows platform going forward. And then there’s Windows 10X (“10X“), Microsoft’s latest attempt at a cut down version of the … Read more
Ok, I know this post is probably going to annoy all those UWP loyalist out there that can’t unpackage their love for the platform and realise that Windows development is in the process of moving on. One of probably the biggest marketing nightmares that Microsoft has unleashed is UWP. To different people, UWP means different … Read more
When moving from Xamarin.Forms across to WinUI, one of the simpler changes to make is to switch out StackLayout for StackPanel. Or so you’d think – unfortunately StackLayout has some quirky behaviour that needs some extra handling to get right. In this post we’ll look at why the StackPanel replacement doesn’t always work, and what … Read more
Ok, just a quick summary post – Windows UI 3.0 and Project Reunion 0.5 preview has just shipped. The most notable change is that WinUI now falls under Project Reunion with changes to namespace, packages and the Visual Studio extension. Installation Here’s a quick summary of getting the latest bits: Start by removing the WinUI3 … Read more
Converting a Xamarin.Forms application across to use WinUI + Uno is mostly straight forward as a lot of the XAML is either the same, or has an equivalent. When you’re dealing with platform specifics, one thing you might come across is the SetUseSafeArea call. For example: The Uno platform exposes the concept of safe area … Read more
A week or so ago David from the XF/Maui team kicked of a thread on twitter challenging devs to add a simple addition to a simple calculator. I particularly liked the transition animation that Robin added, so figured I’d translate this to a WinUI+Uno platform application. I’m going to try to keep as close to … Read more