Sands of MAUI: Issue #23

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 looking forward to .NET Multi-platform App UI (MAUI)—the evolution of Xamarin.Forms with .NET 6. Going forward, developers should have much more confidence in the technology stack and tools as .NET MAUI empowers native cross-platform solutions on mobile and desktop.

While it is a long flight until we reach the sands of MAUI, developer excitement is palpable in all the news/content as we tinker and prepare for .NET MAUI. Like the grains of sand, every piece of news/article/video/tutorial/stream contributes towards developer knowledge 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 7, 2021:

.NET MAUI Community Toolkit Preview

The Community Toolkit team was excited to announce the first pre-release versions of the new .NET MAUI Toolkits—CommunityToolkit.Maui and CommunityToolkit.Maui.Markup.

The CommunityToolkit.Maui package is the evolution of much of what is contained in the Xamarin Community Toolkit—Behaviors, Converters, Extensions and Effects. And the CommunityToolkit.Maui.Markup package would allow developers to architect their apps using MVVM, Bindings and Resource Dictionaries, without the need for XAML—using Fluent C# UI Extensions.

While the .NET MAUI Community Toolkit is clearly work in progress, Brandon Minnick acknowledged community contributions and pointed at the potential for functionality having a trial run in the Toolkit before being promoted to .NET MAUI itself.

A11Y on .NET MAUI Community Standup

Maddy Leger and David Ortinau hosted the latest .NET MAUI Community Standup and guest of honor was Rachel Kang. When Rachel is on the house, Accessibility is the topic—Rachel pointed out the business need and the impact of empathy to reach diverse audiences. .NET MAUI would enable developers to build accessible apps easier than ever—SemanticProperties and Font Scaling is already built in. Maddy and David also went to cover community updates, as well as .NET MAUI roadmap progress.

.NET MAUI on Tizen

Have a Samsung device? Other than a few that run Android, chances are you are running Tizen—an OSS software platform with UI framework and tooling across devices. And just like Xamarin.Forms, looks like .NET MAUI would also be welcome on Tizen. While the PR is open, there is engineering collaboration happening and the potential is obvious. .NET MAUI apps are welcome on Tizen mobile and tablet devices, and the MAUI Weather'21 app runs on TV. Grab your remotes for navigation!

What is .NET MAUI

Just heard about .NET MAUI and want to get started? Claudio Bernasconi has you covered with a nice .NET MAUI overview video. Topics covered include comparing .NET MAUI to Xamarin.Forms, options to migrate and how Blazor fits into the .NET MAUI cross-platform picture, enabling more code sharing.

C# Properties

Way too often, we assume developers around us come from similar backgrounds—everyone is proficient in C# and we can talk about advanced topics in software development. But lot of young developers who are just joining the industry, or folks who may be coming from a different programming language, may be excited with .NET MAUI—this is where Jayme Singleton comes in, lowering the barrier to entry with the C# Language Highlights shows. Jayme was joined by James Montemagno to talk about the awesomeness in C# Properties—the everyday tasks made easier with Getters/Setters, Accessors and Expressions.

That's it for now.

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

Cheers, developers!