#MSBuild Recap: .NET MAUI Preview 4

Luis Matos

The Microsoft Build conference (#MSBuild) brought us a lot of news related to .NET MAUI and in this article, I summarize everything. It is no secret to anyone that one of the most expected technologies is #DotNetMAUI, and it promises a lot.

TIP:

For those who don’t know, Microsoft Build is an annual conference event hosted by Microsoft, aimed at software engineers and developers using Windows, Microsoft Azure, and other Microsoft technologies.

With nothing more to say, let’s get started!

Announcing .NET MAUI Preview 4

During the conference, the #dotnetmaui announce the availability of .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) Preview 4. This Preview introduces more controls and added features.

They announced #DotNetMAUI now has enough basic components to build functional applications for all supported platforms. They also left us a small sample application of what we can do today with .NET MAUI Preview 4.

See the WeatherTwentyOne source code here on GitHub and the MSBuild 2021 demos.

Among the new features we can highlight are:

.NET MAUI Blazor apps

Blazor allows you to create a client-side web user interface with .NET, but sometimes you need more than the web platform offers. Sometimes, you need full access to the device’s native capabilities.

You can now host Blazor components in .NET MAUI applications to create cross-platform native applications using the web UI. Components run natively in the .NET process and represent the web UI in an integrated web view control using a local interop channel.

And if you want to know about what’s new in .NET MAUI Blazor you can do it here.

BlazorWebView

You can now host a Blazor web app directly in your .NET MAUI app and take advantage of the built-in features of the native platform and UI controls.

...
<BlazorWebView 
    HostPage="wwwroot/index.html"
    Services="{StaticResource Services}">
    <BlazorWebView.RootComponent>
        <RootComponent 
            Selector="#app"
            ComponentType="{x:Type local:Main}"
        />
    </BlazorWebView.RootComponent>
</BlazorWebView>
...

For a deeper look at this powerful integration, read more on the ASP.NET blog.

Splash Screen

#DotNetMAUI now has only one place to describe your splash screen for all platforms that support them.

Raw Assets

.NET MAUI now makes it easy to add and reference other resources to your project directly while retaining native platform performance. For example:

...
<WebView Source="index.html" />
...

Tools and productivity

.NET MAUI Check

To quickly install or update all your #DotNetMAUI you just need to run the maui-check .NET tool from the command line to install or update all the dependencies you need to develop applications.

Don't have maui-check? Run this from your command line: 

dotnet tool install -g Redth.Net.Maui.Check

Visual Studio

With Visual Studio 2019 16.11 Preview 1 you can start creating new .NET Multi-platfrom App UI and .NET MAUI Blazor projects.

.NET Hot Reload

The .NET Hot Reload is a new experience that lets you make live edits to the source code (c) of your .NET MAUI application while it’s running, reducing the number of times you need to rebuild your application.

Important:

Currently, support is only for UWP. In upcoming versions .NET Hot Reload will also be available for Android, iOS, and macOS, and will also integrate XAML Hot Reload and Live Visual Tree.

For more information about Hot Reload, see Getting Started with .NET Hot Reload.

.NET MAUI Essentials

In the Weather ’21 demo app, we were shown how they did App Actions integrations, among other things. The interesting thing here is that App Actions comes from MAUI. Essentials, which is likely to have full support for this library when it launches officially.

You can see the repository here.

Third-party libraries

One of the main advantages of using .NET is leveraging a rich ecosystem of controls and libraries to build applications. With Preview 4, the Telerik team has released its first set of controls for .NET MAUI on https://www.telerik.com/maui-ui. See the full annuncement here.

Other component providers are also planning support for .NET MAUI, such as Syncfusion, DevExpress, and GrialKit.

A preview of Prism for .NET MAUI has also been shared.

Others news

.NET Conf 2021 confirmed

Join the free .NET Conf 2021 virtual event confirmed from November 9-11 to learn about the latest developments in the .NET platform, open-source, and development tools.

Learn more at .NET Conf 2021 (dotnetconf.net)

Visual Studio 2022

Visual Studio 2022 is likely to be released in .NET Conf in November and will have full support for .NET 6 and its unified framework for web, client, and mobile applications for Windows and Mac developers. That includes .NET MAUI for cross-platform apps on Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS. You can also use Blazor ASP.NET web technologies to write desktop applications through #DotNetMAUI.

You can see all the details here.

Resources

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I hope this content will be of use to you. A hug, and until next time.

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