Building amazing cross-platform solutions for iOS, Android and Windows
In the previous posts on building Widgets for Windows 11 (Getting Started and Adding to UWP) the design for the widget was defined in a json file that defines the contents and layout of the widget. In this post we’ll take a look at adaptivecards.io, a web-based designer that you can use to design and … Read more
With the recent release of v1.2 of the Windows App SDK came support for developing third party widgets for Windows 11. What’s not immediately obvious from the documentation is that you don’t have to be using Windows UI (WinUI), or even the Windows App SDK, for your application. In this post we’re going to add … 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
With the transition from UWP to WinUI and from Xamarin iOS/Android to .NET for iOS and Android, we’re seeing the convergence of application development in the .NET ecosystem. This convergence shouldn’t be undervalued and is particularly evident when you realised that all of these once disparate platforms, can now take advantage of the common tooling … 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
I’ve touched on implicit and explicit styles a couple of times in previous posts (eg here and here) when talking about XAML styles. In this post I wanted to provide a more detailed explanation on what implicit and explict styles are and how they should be used in XAML to style controls. In discussing style … 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
In my previous post I started a series talking about using the Uno.Extensions that the Uno Platform team have been working on. This post was supposed to be a follow-on post but instead I want to recap one of the topics in the previous post. In case you missed the announcement, version 4.3 of the … Read more
This post will be the first in a series of posts talking about Uno.Extensions, a set of libraries that the Uno team have been working on to simplify common application scenarios and make it quicker and easier to build robust multi-platform applications using the Uno Platform. The source code for this post, and subsequent posts … Read more
One of the things that we take for granted when using applications that have been designed for Windows is the subtle cues that exist for when you’re using the mouse and/or keyboards. For example when you mouse over a button, or an item in a list, the background color changes slightly. Similarly when you use … 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
One of the guilty truths of software development is that despite our best efforts we never write enough tests, and seldom do we write enough automated tests. This isn’t entirely our fault because for some reason testing frameworks, particularly those for UI testing, always seem to be an after thought. In this post we’re going … 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
As we get progressively closer to the v1 release of the Windows App Sdk I thought it worth looking into the different deployment/packaging options you have. In this post we’re going to look at the startup logic for a WinUI 3 Desktop application and discuss how this relates to the different packaging options that are … Read more
I think this will be the last in the series of posts covering validation using the INotifyDataErrorInfo interface, which can be used to expose validation error messages directly in your XAML. In this post we’re going to look at adding custom validation using both the CustomValidationAttribute and by creating our own ValidationAttribute. We’ll also look … Read more
In my previous post, Adding Validation to a XAML Control Using INotifyDataErrorInfo, I walked through adding validation to a view model using the INotifyDataErrorInfo interface and the Community Toolkit. This post will pick up where that post left off and look at how you can customise the error message that gets displayed. This will improve … Read more
In my previous post on Building a XAML UserControl I made use of the CommunityToolkit.Mvvm (formerly Microsoft.Toolkit.Mvvm) NuGet package to provide the implementation of INotifyPropertyChanged used to data bind properties of our view model to the XAML controls. In this post we’re going to again use the community toolkit but this time we’re going to … Read more
One of the powerful aspects of any XAML platform is the ability to define your own controls. In this post we’re going to look at building a user control that allows you to reuse chunks of your user experience. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using UWP, WinUI, Xamarin.Forms (.NET Maui) or the Uno Platform, the … Read more
The Windows Community Toolkit provides a limited feature camera preview control for both UWP and WinUI but this doesn’t help if you want to build a cross platform application with the Uno Platform. In this post I wanted to share the very, very, very early version of a CameraPreview control for Uno. Initial support will … Read more
With the recent excitement surrounding the announcement of Windows 11, there’s renewed interest in developing apps for the Windows platform. In this post we’re going to celebrate what it means to be a Windows App Developer, regardless of what framework or technology you chose. It’s not going to be an exhaustive list of options but … Read more