Building amazing multi-platform solutions for iOS, Android, Mac, Linux and Windows
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
Whilst I was working on migrating the WeatherTwentyOne app from Maui to Uno I noticed that the Maui application includes a number images as SVG files. However, in the XAML there are only ever references to PNG files. On closer inspection of the bin folder for the WinUI project I noticed that for each SVG … Read more
As the dotnet Maui team continue to churn out each preview, it’s great to see some of the showcase apps coming together. One of these is the WeatherTwentyOne app that David Ortinau has been working on. Whilst I’ve been doing a lot of work with the Uno platform recently, I haven’t been spending as time … Read more
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