by grumblingdev on 9/11/23, 11:26 PM with 104 comments
Is it XAML and C#?
by fassssst on 9/12/23, 12:09 AM
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/winui3/
Disclosure: I work at Microsoft on a team that works on visual look and feel for Windows.
by fckmsft on 9/12/23, 12:23 AM
(There is no native look and feel on Windows any more. Microsoft pissed on that concept a long time ago.)
by bmitc on 9/12/23, 12:04 AM
Even the landing page for WinUI starts off by comparing the differences between two versions of it.
by dansiemens on 9/12/23, 3:35 AM
[0] https://microsoft.github.io/react-native-windows/ [1] https://microsoft.github.io/react-native-windows/resources-s...
by mikewarot on 9/11/23, 11:40 PM
You can put together small applications in minutes.
by melvinroest on 9/12/23, 7:24 AM
* Bloc (UI framework)
* The stuff in their new presentation (will be online in a few months)
* Pharo
You could get pretty far.
For example, this game [1] has been packaged as a Win/Mac app [2].
by slater on 9/11/23, 11:30 PM
by thesuperbigfrog on 9/12/23, 1:41 AM
If Teams, Office, and VS Code are any indicators it is web-based technologies:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-365-blog/4-...
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office-is-now-mic...
by joeld42 on 9/12/23, 12:33 AM
The interface of the app is C#, the core is in CPP (I am tempted to use Zig but haven't worked with it enough to commit to it yet).
by deterministic on 9/12/23, 7:12 AM
by edandersen on 9/12/23, 12:09 AM
by madduci on 9/12/23, 6:35 AM
Otherwise another shot could be a Java/JavaFX application, possibility compiled natively or packaged with jpackage, so you deliver your own tailored JVM, without requiring the installation of a JRE on the user system.
Another way would be to embrace the Microsoft ecosystem with the Windows UI Frameworks and then use C# or C++
by dmitrygr on 9/12/23, 5:11 AM
by dylanzhangdev on 9/12/23, 12:58 AM
I have been using aardio to develop desktop software for more than 4 years. I have developed many software. It is designed specifically for Windows desktop.
- Based on the syntax of Lua and JS, if you have one of these 2 foundations, you can get started in 1 hour. - Comes with an IDE, developing, compiling, debugging, rich standard libraries and sample code. - Support WYSIWYG UI control drag-and-drop. - Supports WebView2 and native development mixed - Support the use of Python, Go, C#, etc., can be used as a glue language. - The size of the packaged file is very small - The IDE and tutorials, documentation, and IntelliSense are only available in Chinese, but by using translation, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. For experienced programmers, it is easy to understand.
by bags43 on 9/12/23, 7:55 AM
- Still supported on latest .NET
- Most feature rich and battle tested
- Good documentation
- You will learn XAML which can be later used once when WinUI 3.0 is more mature (at least another 5,6 years will be needed with their current development velocity)
PS.
XAML is a bit different but similiar enoguh between WPF and WinUI.
Of course it depends on what type of application.
by turtlebits on 9/12/23, 12:04 AM
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/desktop/?view=netde...
by NoZebra120vClip on 9/12/23, 10:43 AM
Since PWAs run in the browser of choice, they are definitely native, especially if you choose Edge, which is approaching dominance on the platform.
PWAs grant automatic cross-platform ability. I can install and run PWA in Windows, Android, ChromeOS, you name it.
Also it is super minimum hassle. Windows never bothers me about the Store, or signing, or updating any PWA; it's simply transparent.
by johnea on 9/12/23, 2:12 AM
by znpy on 9/12/23, 7:06 PM
It was a fairly complex desktop app that did a number of interesting things in the domain of graphics too.
It was a simple C++ and QT app, with the necessary domain-specific libraries.
If you need to develop a non-trivial gui app in windows then C++ and QT is a great combo.
by hbcondo714 on 9/12/23, 12:04 AM
by jeffrallen on 9/12/23, 10:52 AM
by bvoq on 9/14/23, 3:09 AM
by kcartlidge on 9/13/23, 5:04 PM
By career I'm mostly a C# person but (IMHO) everything desktop UI that Microsoft have done since WinForms has proven to be not worth using for the long (or even medium) term.
by Panqueca_do_mar on 9/12/23, 5:44 AM
Or you can look into https://tauri.app/
by m_fayer on 9/12/23, 7:30 AM
by steve1977 on 9/12/23, 11:57 AM
by lukew3 on 9/12/23, 4:54 AM
by yumraj on 9/12/23, 12:36 AM
by JohnDeHope on 9/12/23, 1:10 PM
by yett on 9/12/23, 3:36 AM
by CrimsonCape on 9/13/23, 6:40 PM
That leaves the opportunity of the future to the community. And I think we want to convey the message that 1. We have web UI options, so don't reinvent that wheel. 2. Windows is not web, so give us a UI that is desktop-centric. And in that vein, people use desktop for complex tasks, so don't try to force Windows into colorful Duplo-sized buttons and style (don't make Windows web: i'm looking at you WinUI, Xamarin,etc; all more recent Microsoft offerings ditch the complexity and move toward web design). We demand feature rich, deep, complex systems.
WPF is the most advanced UI designer ever created. WPF was made open-source (mostly) and then mothballed. It's way too complex to build from source and they are accepting nearly zero PRs from non-Microsoft sources. Maybe the move to send WPF management to the India team was a possible way to increase activity around WPF (since its repo has been drydocked and managed by like 3 people for years).
Avalonia is nice, but not nearly as capable.
I would love a potential future to be Microsoft dusting off WPF and getting serious about open-source. Fix some infrastructural problems like building from source that allow developers to begin exploring how to rebuild the rendering engine, preferably using something GPU-driven like OpenGL. There is a lot of excitement in the realm of using game engines to render UI, it would be great to have some team members be architects to design the retained-mode side of the UI interfacing with team members that are immediate mode designers, think OpenGL, Vulkan, etc. Having looked through the WPF source code, this is pretty much how it was, the WPF logic interfacing with Windows draw calls. It's just outdated.
WPF isn't fully open source, which is a huge problem. A lot of the low level graphics calls are still calling to non-open-source Windows libraries, so it's really opaque how to modularize the rendering calls. Microsoft needs to spend a year devoting a team to internally forking Win32 and then building interfaces for every WPF call into non-open-source rendering code. Then the community can actually fork some alternatives using modern graphics renderers.
I don't think we will ever see this though. Microsoft, despite languishing as a market-mover, has too much temerity to give the community this kind of control over it's core. They want WPF as an "outdated" technology to be reliant on Win32, instead of wanting it to be replaced with something more modern. They will happily keep releasing incomplete and remedial UI frameworks built atop antiquated DirectX forever.
by farseer on 9/12/23, 4:08 AM