This content originally appeared on Telerik Blogs and was authored by Sam Basu
Welcome to the Sands of MAUI—newsletter style issues dedicated to bringing together the latest .NET MAUI content relevant to developers.
A particle of sand—tiny and innocuous. But put a lot of sand particles together and we have something big—a force to reckon with. It is the smallest grains of sand that often add up to form massive beaches, dunes and deserts.
.NET developers are excited with the reality of .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI)—the evolution of modern .NET cross-platform developer technology stack. With stable tooling and a rich ecosystem, .NET MAUI empowers developers to build native cross-platform apps for mobile/desktop from single shared codebase, while inviting web technologies in the mix.
While it may take a long flight to reach the sands of MAUI island, developer excitement around .NET MAUI is quite palpable with all the created content. Like the grains of sand, every piece of news/article/documentation/video/tutorial/livestream contributes toward developer experiences in .NET MAUI and we grow a community/ecosystem willing to learn and help.
Sands of MAUI is a humble attempt to collect all the .NET MAUI awesomeness in one place. Here's what is noteworthy for the week of July 29, 2024:
XAML Productivity
.NET MAUI is the evolution of modern .NET cross-platform development stack, allowing developers to reach mobile and desktop form factors from single shared codebase. XAML has had a long developer history as a UI visual tree markup language and continues to be the dominant way .NET MAUI developers build their cross-platform UI.
With support for mobile and desktop form factors, XAML offers .NET MAUI developers the much-needed UI flexibility and a rich tooling ecosystem around XAML in Visual Studio helps with developer productivity. Not everybody might know all the productivity tools built right inside Visual Studio, and Gerald Versluis produced a video—boosting XAML productivity for .NET MAUI development.
Gerald starts off with a vanilla .NET MAUI project created with default template and proceeds to show off XAML productivity tools built inside Visual Studio or the running app. While .NET MAUI apps can run on iOS/Android/macOS, the development experience of building Windows apps with Visual Studio is quite simply the best.
With easy-to-follow examples, Gerald walks through the many features aimed at XAML developer productivity—like Windows InApp Toolbar, XAML Live Preview, Live Visual Tree, Hot Reload, Debug Rainbows and more. Developers building cross-platform .NET MAUI apps have all the tools to build pixel-perfect UI with XAML—cheers to that.
Lifecycle Events
.NET MAUI is built to enable .NET developers to create cross-platform apps for Android, iOS, macOS and Windows, with deep native integrations, platform-native UI and hybrid experiences. While much of the code .NET MAUI developers write is meant to run cross-platform, there are times when developers need to get down to platform-specific level. One example is when tapping into app lifecycle events. Marco Siccardi wrote up a wonderful article on managing lifecycle hooks on Apple ecosystem—handling lifecycle events on iOS and MacCatalyst with .NET MAUI.
Marco starts with a generic .NET MAUI app and taps into lifecycle events for iOS/MacCatalyst as per official documentation, writing out a log for every event hit. On iOS, the results are as expected—log entries show the code hitting all the delegate handlers as specified, while the app cycles through various lifecycle stages. Things are not the same granularity on macOS—part of the reason is Apple having introduced UIWindowScene to handle everything related to the app UI.
In order to tap into lifecycle events from MacCatalyst app, the hooks in the .NET MAUI app need to use Scenes. Marco shows off the Info.plist entry and the code needed to accomplish this. With updated event handlers, developers can now tap into every type of lifecycle event on iOS and MacCatalyst—thanks for the pointers Marco.
Games with .NET MAUI
It’s July and time for #MAUIUIJuly again. Based on an idea originally started for Xamarin by Steven Thewissen, MAUI UI July is a month-long community-driven event where anyone gets to share enthusiasm and passion for .NET MAUI. Run by Matt Goldman, this is a great opportunity for .NET MAUI developers to learn from each other—MAUI UI July is happening throughout July 2024. The next article comes from Farshad Momtaz with an inspiring writeup—building games with .NET MAUI.
For most developers plotting to build a cross-platform game, the usual framework suspects are Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot or Game Maker. Turns out, .NET MAUI is also perfectly capable of building cross-platform games, and Farshad has created a whole Sudoku game entirely in .NET MAUI. The core challenges were simple—the game needed to look good and be fast. Farshad shares some key learnings—MVVM design pattern can be awesome once developers get used to it and Compiled Bindings can do a lot for app speed. With source code for the Sudoku game open sourced, Farshad is inviting fellow developers to envision building games with .NET MAUI—thanks for the inspiration.
.NET Conf Focus
It is the age of artificial intelligence. AI is slowly changing the way we live and work, and AI’s popularity is driving adoption in enterprise and consumer apps. AI presents a huge opportunity for .NET developers to infuse apps with solutions powered by Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs). There is a big learning opportunity coming up and Mehul Harry wrote up the announcement—.NET Conf: Focus on AI is happening on August 20, 2024.
.NET Conf: Focus is a series of smaller live events that are delivered throughout the year, each focusing on specific things developers can do with modern .NET. On August 20, .NET Conf: Focus on AI will dive deep into the world of AI, exploring how .NET developers can leverage AI libraries and features to build smarter applications, enhance productivity and provide better user experiences.
This one-day virtual event will be packed with insightful sessions from industry experts and community leaders—a must-attend for any .NET developer looking to enhance their apps with AI.
Designer-Developer Gap
Modern web, mobile and desktop apps often strive for delightful UX, and beautifully styled UI design is one way to achieve the goal. And beautiful design is often crafted by designers and handed off to developers to go build the app. Unfortunately, there are some potential friction points in the designer-developer workflow. Gaining a more thorough understanding of what all parties are looking for is the best way to minimize friction, and Kathryn Grayson Nanz wrote up an article—closing the designer-developer gap.
At conference booths, Kathryn and team have been running a little experiment—armed with a jumbo pack of sticky notes, a whiteboard and a dream, the goal is to capture various aspects of the design to development workflow. The expectation is to fill in knowledge gaps—what tools are folks using, what they like about their process and what they wish was different. The response has been incredible—hundreds of developers have shared their experiences—folks have commiserated over common pain points, celebrated wins and brainstormed what an ideal dev/design workflow could look like.
Kathryn recaps main points of what developers wish designers knew when it comes to building modern apps and points to the newly launched State of Designer-Developer Collaboration 2024 Survey. With better understanding of expectations and smarter tools, we can all do better with the design to development workflow—upwards and onwards.
That’s it for now.
We’ll see you next week with more awesome content relevant to .NET MAUI.
Cheers, developers!
This content originally appeared on Telerik Blogs and was authored by Sam Basu
Sam Basu | Sciencx (2024-07-29T16:07:45+00:00) Sands of MAUI: Issue #153. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2024/07/29/sands-of-maui-issue-153/
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