Sands of MAUI: Issue #116

Welcome to the Sands of MAUI—newsletter-style issues dedicated to bringing together 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.

Most .NET developers are excited with .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI)—the evolution of modern .NET cross-platform developer experience. Going forward, developers will be empowered with the .NET MAUI technology stack and stable tooling to build native cross-platform apps for mobile/desktop from single shared codebase.

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 towards developer knowledge 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 September 5, 2023:

State of .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. There is much to be excited about .NET MAUI—framework maturity, stable tooling and welcoming web developers.

Some of the folks who care a lot about .NET MAUI came together for a community-driven Twitch long stream named Paddle Boarding in MAUI, and Maddy Montaquila kicked things off the right way—State of .NET MAUI.

The goal of the Paddle Boarding in MAUI livestream was simple—to share knowledge, show off code/tooling, engage and learn together, while raising charitable donations for supporting Maui wildfire recovery. Maddy started things off talking about upcoming enhancements in .NET MAUI—the next big milestone is with the .NET 8 release. It is always reassuring to see success stories—Maddy talked through a list of big companies building fresh apps or migrating to .NET MAUI.

The rest of the time was well spent in going over the newest tooling update for .NET MAUI developers—the exciting .NET MAUI Extension for Visual Studio Code. The state of .NET MAUI looks good with some calm and maturity in the ecosystem—plenty to improve on, but the future looks promising.

Visual Studio for Mac

.NET MAUI development experience has evolved quite a bit—there is now stable tooling with Visual Studio on both Windows and macOS. However, there is a bit of bad news for fans of Visual Studio for Mac and Anthony Cangialosi wrote up the announcement—VS for Mac is being retired next year. This does sound like the end of an era for folks who have seen the evolution of cross-platform IDE on macOS, starting with Mono Develop, evolving to Xamarin Studio and then finally to present day VS for Mac.

The silver lining here is there would be more streamlined focus on improving tooling for developers building for .NET MAUI on macOS. Developers on macOS always have the option of virtualized solutions—like running Visual Studio IDE on Windows within a VM running on macOS or cloud-hosted VMs like Microsoft Dev Box.

However, Visual Studio Code continues to be the uber-popular light-weight code editor, working consistently across Windows/macOS/Linux. The new cross-platform .NET MAUI Extension for VS Code rides on C# Dev Kit—the lightweight, editor-first experience that augments C# development in VS Code with a Solution Explorer, native Test Explorer, AI-powered code authoring and more. Paired with C# Dev Kit, the .NET MAUI extension for VS Code provides developers with tools to develop/debug/deploy cross-platform .NET mobile/desktop apps with VS Code on Windows, macOS and Linux.

While early days with some limitations, the .NET MAUI Extension for VS Code promises seamless .NET cross-platform development—a solid start to .NET MAUI development on VS Code.

PDFViewer for .NET MAUI

The world runs on PDFs. Ask any enterprise developer and this would not be much of an overstatement—PDFs are needed to support so many types of workflows across mobile/desktop apps. There is good news for folks building modern .NET MAUI apps with Telerik UI and Rossitza Fakalieva wrote up an article—say hello to PDFViewer in Telerik UI for .NET MAUI.

While Telerik Document Processing libraries allow for creation/editing of PDFs, the majority of PDF workflows have the need to be able to open, view and navigate through PDF documents. The new Telerik PDFViewer for .NET MAUI is supported on Windows, macOS, iOS and Android—it is feature-rich, so developers get to reap the most benefits.

Rossi talks through some of the key PDFViewer features—support for various document sources and complex PDF structures, continuous scrolling and navigation, zooming, load on demand, built-in Toolbar, busy indicator and rich customization options. Rossi walks through how .NET MAUI developers can get started using the Telerik PDFViewer, load PDF documents from various sources and set up variety of configurations—there is support for embedded fonts, dual navigation layouts, zooming and scrolling, link annotations, document password protection and customizable busy indicators.

The Telerik PDFViewer sports a built-in robust Toolbar, where all configurable options for visualizing the PDF document and controlling navigation are exposed to the end user—developers are free to roll with default Toobar items or add their own with custom styling.

Opening, viewing and navigating PDF documents in .NET MAUI—done and done with PDFViewer in Telerik UI for .NET MAUI.

Telerik UI for .NET MAUI

While .NET MAUI provides a wonderful foundation for modern .NET cross-platform development, serious developers know the need to augment the UI stack—no point trying to recreate the wheel when engineering is expensive.

Telerik UI for .NET MAUI can help—the most comprehensive UI component library for polished performant UI controls that work seamlessly across mobile and desktop. Becky Buckler recently hosted an aging developer for an On .NET show episode—beautiful UI controls for .NET MAUI with Telerik UI.

The conversation started with the core benefits of .NET MAUI for cross-platform development—a single shared codebase allows reach into mobile/desktop platforms. Sophisticated UI for .NET MAUI should be the same way—abstracted APIs prevent developer learning curves, while rendering native UI across iOS/Android/Windows/macOS. Telerik UI for .NET MAUI suite has followed along the .NET MAUI journey closely, providing developers the professional UI components needed to ship .NET MAUI apps faster.

While Telerik UI Showcase apps are in respective App Stores, it's nice that source code is open sourced—developers can get a feel for all UI components running locally and peruse a real .NET MAUI production app codebase. While the Gallery app showcases all the UI, the Crypto Tracker demo app demonstrates how developers can reuse UI, but cater varying UX across mobile/desktop form factors.

With thorough docs, real samples and solid support, Telerik UI for .NET MAUI is here to help .NET MAUI developers be more productive with beautiful performant UI components.

F1 Game App with .NET MAUI

There are motor sports, and there are Formula 1 motor sports. While F1 is an exhilarating sport pushing the frontiers of racing technology, average humans can get in on the fun with the F1® 23 video game—an official product of the FIA Formula One World Championship.

There is good news for fans of the F1® 23 game—there is a new telemetry app out in Android and Windows stores. Even better, it is written with .NET MAUI by Gustavo Vera Scuderi—say hello to F1 Telemetry Utility App for F1® 23.

Hardcore racing gamers know the only way to improve is to look at statistics and telemetry at the end of each race. Enable telemetry in the F1® 23 game options, and the new F1 Spotter app captures all the data—like tachometer, tire compound/condition, fuel, ERS, track condition, position, intervals, lap times, car damage and weather forecast.

With polished UI and detailed presentation, Gustavo shows off the power of .NET MAUI working seamlessly across mobile and desktop—cheers for the inspirations.

That's it for now.

We'll see you next week with more awesome content relevant to .NET MAUI.

Cheers, developers!