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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
Last month I posted on Building a Roadmap for Windows Development, where I discussed some of the components that need to come together in a coherent manner for the Windows developer platform of the future. These included things like running in the Windows App Container and the app having an Identity. In this post I’ll … 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
Sometimes I forget just how old and dated XAML is, and how little advances Microsoft has made to make it easy to work with. With the move to WinUI, hopefully we’ll start to see some much needed improvements – we’ve seen some already with the ability to define row and column definitions as a single … Read more
This is a quick post just to provide a reference point for anyone who’s looking for the default styles, templates, colors etc for Windows UI. Let’s break this down a bit: UWP Let’s start with the current technology, UWP. If you want to inspect the default styles and templates for UWP controls, you just need … Read more
The next 6-12 months are going to be super exciting with both preview and releases planned for WinUI, Project Reunion and Maui (aka Xamarin.Forms). WinUI/Reunion represent a significant decoupling for Windows apps from the underlying OS version. Meanwhile Maui will provide a bit of a reset for Xamarin.Forms which some major improvements to the way … Read more