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 & 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 February 10, 2025:
Theming in .NET MAUI
.NET MAUI is the evolution of modern .NET cross-platform development stack, allowing developers to reach mobile and desktop form factors from a single shared codebase. As developers build modern cross-platform apps, one thing is obvious—themes are an inevitable part of any app’s aesthetics and supporting them is a must for enhancing UI/UX. There is great news for .NET MAUI developers using Telerik UI, and Viktoria Grozdancheva wrote up an excellent article—say hello to theming support in .NET MAUI.
Modern mobile/desktop clients are complicated, and developers can use all the support available to stay productive—Progress Telerik UI for .NET MAUI can help. New with latest release is theming support for Telerik UI for .NET MAUI—a collection of styles and templates that determine the appearance .NET MAUI UI components.
Viktoria starts with the basics of how to turn on Telerik theming across the app and leverage the eight predefined color swatches that the Telerik .NET MAUI theme comes with—Main, Main Dark, Ocean Blue, Ocean Blue Dark, Purple, Purple Dark, Turquoise and Turquoise Dark. With predefined page templates for .NET MAUI, it is easy to see Telerik .NET MAUI theming in action.
It is also trivial for developers to honor the device/OS light/dark modes by switching themes. Viktoria walks through how developers can put users in charge by allowing switching between light/dark modes with app UI—Telerik .NET MAUI theming follows along. Telerik .NET MAUI theming is now enabled across all Telerik UI for .NET MAUI apps. Developers should find productivity and design aesthetics easy to work with consistently across modern mobile/desktop apps. Cheers to that.
Developer Productivity
.NET MAUI is built to enable .NET developers to create cross-platform apps for Android, iOS, macOS and Windows, with deep platform integrations, native UI and hybrid web experiences. With a stable platform, mature tooling and rich ecosystem, .NET MAUI is welcoming many more developers diving in to build modern cross-platform apps. Developer productivity is key, and James Montemagno produced the perfect video to showcase the latest developer experience—faster Hot Reload and Live Preview for .NET MAUI/Blazor Hybrid in Visual Studio.
With Visual Studio 2022 v17.13, .NET MAUI developers have a revolutionary new way of making code changes and seeing the immediate effects through Hot Reload/Live Preview—all without actually debugging the app. Previewed at .NET Conf, this new Visual Studio feature allows developers to get a live preview of their code changes—without the drama of a full debug session, which obviously makes for a quicker developer inner loop.
Without firing up a debug session, developers can bring up Live Preview, see the XAML adornments, interact with the app and pinpoint specific visual tree elements. XAML code changes are reflected in the Live Preview window immediately. Enabled for now with a Visual Studio setting, XAML Live Preview outside of the debugger can be an awesome way to cut down on developer inner loop and iterate faster with XAML app UI—here’s to better developer productivity.
.NET MAUI Community Standup
The .NET MAUI team hosts monthly Community Standup livestreams to celebrate all things .NET MAUI and provide updates—a wonderful way to bring the developer community together. A lot of good things are happening in .NET MAUI as a platform, and developer community excitement is noticeable. David Ortinau and Rachel Kang hosted February’s .NET MAUI Community Standup—let Copilot fix your XAML.
After some usual banter, Rachel covered all the community news—content contributions from the developer community are impressive indeed. David talked through some engineering updates and open-source PR contributions. It was then time to bring in the special guest of the month—Kunyi Li from .NET MAUI engineering team.
While .NET MAUI offers multiple ways for developers to build the app visual tree, like through C# or Blazor, by far the dominant option is XAML. Though popular, XAML can get a little verbose. Looks like there is now help from GitHub Copilot. Kunyi showed off some latest updates in Copilot smartness within Visual Studio—it can fix XAML syntax errors, child container mistakes and more, all while having a conversational interface with developers. AI coding assistants have come a long way, and looks like .NET MAUI developers can lean on their trusted Copilot companions a little more while working with C#/XAML codebases.
What’s New in .NET MAUI
Modern .NET is powerful, open-source, cross-platform and welcoming to all, with mature tooling accompanied by rich ecosystems. With .NET 9 release in Nov 2024, there was a lot to celebrate for .NET and .NET MAUI in particular, and .NET Conf provided much content to catch up on. All the content updates might feel overwhelming for developers, but Leomaris Reyes is here to help with summarization—let’s recap what’s new in .NET MAUI for .NET 9.
David Ortinau and Rachel Kang had hosted a .NET Conf session to cover all the .NET MAUI updates, and Leomaris highlights the most relevant points for developers. Microsoft’s investment in client-side technologies has been rewarding and it has been a year of growth for .NET MAUI all around.
Adoption numbers for .NET MAUI are at an all-time high, and developer engagement is impressive. With stability comes more success stories of companies using .NET MAUI to build production apps, and that inspires more confidence. There are some nice .NET MAUI enhancements with .NET 9—there’s new UI help, app lifecycle improvements, performance tuning and better platform integrations. Now is as good a time as any to be a cross-platform developer with .NET—upward and onward with .NET MAUI.
DeepSeek Integrations
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/small language models. There is no dearth of excitement in the AI space and recently, DeepSeek has taken the tech world by storm. While there are geopolitical forces at play, for developers it is another new frontier, and Dave Brock wrote up an article—introduction and .NET integration with DeepSeek.
One of the best ways to experiment with AI models is .NET Aspire—an opinionated, cloud-ready stack built for .NET-distributed apps. The popular DeepSeek R1 model is great for experimentation. It is open source and can be run locally without needing too much space or computing power.
Dave walks through the developer experience of kickstarting a .NET Aspire project with Docker container and Ollama NuGet packages for hosting. With a few dependencies loaded up, DeepSeek is ready for consumption from .NET apps. The reasoning engine in DeepSeek is nice, and .NET developers have yet another AI model to experiment with—plenty of inspiration to add intelligence in modern apps.
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 (2025-02-10T15:22:26+00:00) Sands of MAUI: Issue #174. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/02/10/sands-of-maui-issue-174/
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