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 October 28, 2024:
AI Prompt with .NET MAUI
It is the age of artificial intelligence (AI). 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), as well as boost developer productivity. There is help for .NET MAUI developers looking to infuse some AI smartness in their apps, and Héctor Pérez wrote up a wonderful article—getting started with .NET MAUI Telerik AI Prompt UI.
Hector starts with the basics of getting the needed tools for AI integration inside .NET MAUI apps—Telerik UI, MVVM help from .NET MAUI Community Toolkit and wrapper libraries to reach Azure OpenAI. The Telerik AI Prompt UI allows for easy integration of GenAI services inside .NET MAUI apps—predefined Views, custom Suggestions, styling APIs, Localization and Command support only add to developer flexibility.
With step-by-step instructions on how to wire up AI services inside .NET MAUI apps with helper classes, Hector showcases the developer experience using Telerik AIPrompt UI—with Views, up/down votes, rating UI, custom Suggestions and easy Command support, developers feel at home right away. AI presents a tectonic shift in the software industry and all of generative AI smartness is now readily accessible from modern cross-platform .NET MAUI apps.
Deploy/Debug on iOS
.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. With increased stability and a rich ecosystem, there are lot more developers building cross-platform apps with .NET MAUI—many on Visual Studio Code on macOS, and the .NET MAUI developer experience in VS Code is constantly getting better. There are still some hoops to jump through when targeting iOS, and James Montemagno produced a video a while back that might help—deploy and debug .NET MAUI apps to iOS devices from VS Code.
James starts with the basics of putting iOS devices in developer mode—there are just some things developers need to know before seeing their beloved apps deployed to iPhone/iPad devices. Armed with free/paid Apple Developer accounts, developers will do well understanding key concepts—Certificates, App IDs, Provisioning Profiles and code signing apps. James walks through the entire developer experience of deploying to iOS devices from VS Code, including some common roadblocks.
With a little understanding of moving pieces for iOS deployment through XCode and Apple Developer accounts, .NET MAUI developers can get going deploying cross-platform apps to iOS devices. There is developer zen in seeing code running on mobile devices, as intended for users. There are some things to know, but developers have plenty of help to power through and deploy/debug .NET MAUI apps to Apple devices.
Splash Screens with .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. Mobile apps often have to do some work before displaying the first screen and users need to kept informed that the app is loading—the answer often is splash screens.
Splash screens are displayed immediately when an app is launched, providing immediate feedback to users while app resources are initialized and are dismissed once the app is ready for interaction. Splash screens can be tricky for .NET developers across platforms, but thankfully .NET MAUI has built-in cross-platform support for handling splash screens for iOS and Android.
In a .NET MAUI app project, a splash screen can be specified in a single location in project .csproj file. At build time, it can be resized to the correct resolution for target platforms and conveniently added to app packages. This is done through an internal image resize-itizer and works best with SVG files for optimum fidelity. Since .NET MAUI does convert SVG files to PNG, the only SVG reference should be in project setup—any direct platform-specific references should be with PNG.
Since image resizing is involved, .NET MAUI uses the concept of image base size—essentially, the baseline density of the image for up or down scaling. Developers also have control over image tint and background color, and background transparency with SVG can open up lots of possibilities. It is nice to see modern cross-platform frameworks helping out developers cater to specific platform nuances—splash screens are wonderful way to create a strong branding and good first impression for users.
Telerik Release
Modern mobile/desktop clients or web frontends are complicated—developers can use all the help available to stay productive. Progress Software maintains a suite of UI components and libraries/tools to help developers be more successful—Telerik UI for all things .NET, and Kendo UI for all things JavaScript. There are fresh new goodies incoming—say hello to the Telerik/Kendo UI 2024 Q4 release.
Slated for Nov. 20, 2024, the upcoming Progress release breaks new ground in UI development with professionally built design system assets, advanced data-driven visualizations and Day 0 support for the latest .NET and JavaScript frameworks. With the late fall release, design and development teams will find solutions to emerging problems, like the design-to-code handoff, while providing smooth data-driven experiences, support for .NET 9, Angular 19, KendoReact integration with Astro and more.
The Telerik release will pack a lot of new enterprise-ready UI components with support for the latest runtimes—across ASP.NET Core, Blazor, .NET MAUI, WinUI, WPF, WinForms and more. The Telerik UI for .NET MAUI suite earns a whole bunch of fresh new UI components, with DatePager and GridSplitter controls leading the way. Developers can stay tuned to the next big release for hot new bits—and three release webinars to unpack all the goodness for developer productivity across .NET/JS.
UX Crash Course
Modern web, mobile and desktop apps often strive for delightful UX, and beautifully styled UI design is one way to achieve the goal. However, before designers/developers start creating the UI for any app, it helps understand some basic tenets of good UX—an app’s UI and UX design is affected by all the other apps a user encounters each day. Thankfully, we have experts who can break down knowledge barriers, and Kathryn Grayson Nanz wrote up a UX crash course article—mental models and cognitive load.
As much as developers might love for apps/websites to be special and unique, the truth is, for users, they exist in the context of everything else they’ve used before. Kathryn defines the mental model—it is the user’s understanding they build and the assumptions they make about their current experience, based on the similar experiences they’ve had up until now. By meeting wider standards of web and application design, developers can allow users to carry over everything they’ve learned—things “just work” because they’re not being forced to go against the grain to learn something new in order to use an app.
Cognitive load is the amount of effort and energy that it takes for a user to complete a task. Every new page or interaction pattern will increase cognitive cost for users—they have to pause and take time to figure out a new layout, new contents, what they should be doing and where they can click/tap. Kathryn walks through a bunch of best practices that reduce the cognitive load on users—things most cross-platform app developers will do well to understand and adhere to.
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 (2024-10-28T15:25:03+00:00) Sands of MAUI: Issue #165. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2024/10/28/sands-of-maui-issue-165/
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