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Announcing Uno Platform Studio featuring Hot Design

We are proud to introduce Uno Platform Studio, a suite of productivity tools featuring Hot Design, a next-generation Visual Designer for .NET cross-platform apps!

To make every developer as productive as possible, Uno Platform Studio aids developers through the various parts of the development lifecycle, from design handoff to continuously designing and building the app:

Hot Design™ – The Industry-first Visual Designer for cross-platform .NET Applications. Transform your running app into a Designer from any IDE on any OS.
Hot Reload – Reliably update any code in your app and get instant confirmation your changes were applied with its new App Indicator
Design-to-Code – Completely eliminate the manual design handoff process by generating ready-to-use well-structured/clean XAML or C# Markup code from a single click.

From the stage of .NET Conf, on November 14^th at 5PM EST – we will demo these tools working seamlessly together for the first time ever – make sure you save the time slot!

The Ecosystem Gap: Why We Built Hot Design

To truly revolutionize the field, we had to take the WYSIWYG concept beyond legacy designers you may recall from the WPF, WinForms, or even Delphi days. Remember these days?

While very useful at the time, they often allow for basic visual changes and require restarting of the app every time you make any changes, as well as mocking data. Those days are now over, and Windows and .NET ecosystem are now richer for a unique Designer that no other developer ecosystem has!!

UI Developer Tooling of the Past and Present

Let’s summarize Editors, Previewers and Dev Tools approaches and discuss their strengths and limitations. Some of these tools have remained largely unchanged for the past 20-30 years, leading to what we believe is a disconnected experience between design-time and runtime development.

	Strengths	Limitations
Dev Tools	Provide runtime inspection of the app Allow simulation of UI control value changes	Changes are not persistent No synchronization with source code Limited help in UI design and creation
Previewers	Useful for quick prototyping Provide approximations of UI appearance	Design-time experience only May not accurately represent the final result on the target platform
Legacy Designers	Visual code editing Approximation of app appearance	Tied to specific IDEs and operating systems Require mock data for design-time May not support common architecture patterns (e.g., dependency injection) Limited support for user controls and third-party components Potential for crashes due to differences between design and runtime contexts Require designers/developers to use additional tools they are not used to.

As a recap, we believe these approaches share the following challenges:

Disconnected Experiences: The separation between design-time and runtime tools can lead to inefficiencies and inconsistencies.
Limited Realism: Design-time tools often cannot accurately represent the final UI, especially when it comes to data and complex interactions.
Lack of Integration: The tools are often not well-integrated with each other or with modern development practices.
Inflexibility: Many of these tools are tied to specific platforms or development environments, limiting their usefulness in cross-platform scenarios.
Inefficient Workflow: The need to constantly switch between different tools and contexts can slow down development and introduce errors

UI Developer Tool of the Future

Uno Platform Studio closes all the gaps identified above and more, offering a runtime Visual Designer that enables you to work in real time, without breaking your workflow. There’s no approximation of the UI or requirement for mock. Any changes are persisted in real time, without needing the application to be restarted for each change to take effect.

Let’s look into the benefits of all three pillars of Uno Platform Studio.

1. Hot Design: What benefits does Hot Design bring?

Hot Design™ is the next-generation Visual Designer for cross-platform .NET Applications. It transforms your running app into a Designer from any IDE on any OS.

The data-binding productivity boost alone makes it a game-changer for seasoned .NET devs. At the same time the intuitive interface lowers the barrier for newcomers as changes on the designer are immediately applied to code, therefore providing a powerful learning loop.

Let’s explore all the productivity benefits of Hot Design and this unique, patent-pending approach provides you.

Join the waitlist

Join the waitlist now for early beta access—first come, first served! Contributors and community members, email info@platform.uno to get fast-tracked.

Works with Visual Studio, VS Code or Rider.

Keep using the IDE you love. Hot Design is IDE agnostic, and it seamlessly integrates with Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and Rider on all operating systems, enabling you to develop applications with rich UI on every platform that .NET supports.

Round-Trip Sync Between Designer and Code

In Hot Design, any adjustment made in the Designer updates the XAML code in real time. Also, any code changes are reflected in UI allowing for a consistent design-to-code experience. This feature is especially valuable when working on complex UIs, as it shortens the development cycle and streamlines the dev process.

Custom and Third-Party UI Control Supported!

Hot Design fully supports user-created and third-party UI components, simplifying customization and integration, a crucial feature for developers working with sophisticated design systems and controls.

Work with Real Data

With traditional designers you had to create mock data. With Hot Design, you can work directly with the actual data sources within the running app to get the true feel of how your app looks and behaves. No need to spend time mocking your data anymore! Unless you want to, of course, in which case mocking data is supported too 😊

Use your favorite Design Pattern

Easily consume real-time data while keeping UI logic separate from the core logic. Hot Design isn’t dependent on the choice of state management pattern, so it will work with both MVVM and MVUX.

Design UI for a Remote Device

Imagine a scenario where you are visually designing a UI for a remote device, in real time, using VS Code, on a Mac. No need to imagine it, you can do it now.

Now you can design and adjust UI directly on a remote device, making it easier to perfect the user experience on real hardware. You can instantly see and fine-tune changes on any remote device without the need for constant redeployment, saving precious time.

2. Hot Reload: What benefits does Hot Reload bring?

Hot Reload lets you see UI changes instantly without rebuilding the app, boosting productivity and reducing iteration time, and it works seamlessly with Hot Design™. In addition to providing feedback on visual and functional tweaks in the UI, our Hot Reload also provides a visual indicator to help you further monitor changes while developing.

3. Design-to-Code: What benefits does Figma plugin bring?

The Uno Platform Figma plugin can export your Figma designs to XAML or C# Markup with one click and easily paste the resulting markup into Uno Platform Studio & Hot Design. With this workflow, we are providing a pragmatic solution to Design to Developer handoff. This allows both roles to stay in the tool of their preference – Figma for designer or Visual Studio / VS Code / Rider for developers.

Beta Waitlist Available Now & Love for our Community!

You can get on the waitlist now. We will be letting devs in on first-come, first-served basis, in small cohorts, to make sure we are able to work closely with beta testers.

If you are a contributor to Uno Platform or have been part of our community in the past, let us know you’re on the waitlist by emailing info@platform.uno, and we’ll fast-track your beta access!

Summary:

Uno Platform Studio revolutionizes the field of Visual Designers. It ensures you stay in the flow, in the environment of your preference, building apps for every platform .NET runs on.

Hot Design™ – The Industry-first Visual Designer for cross-platform .NET Applications. Transform your running app into a Designer from any IDE on any OS.
Hot Reload – Reliably update any code in your app and get instant confirmation your changes were applied with its new App Indicator
Design-to-Code – Completely eliminate the manual design handoff process by generating ready-to-use well-structured/clean XAML or C# Markup code from a single click.

We are just getting started. We hope we piqued your interest, so you sign up for the beta waitlist.

If you are new to Uno Platform and only finding it now, you should give it a try via our Get Started tutorials.

Don’t forget to attend our .NET Conf 2024 session, on November 14^th at 5PM where we will demonstrate these tools working seamlessly together for the first time ever – make sure you join us!

Uno Platform at .NET Conf 2024

Don’t forget to attend our .NET Conf 2024 session, on November 14th at 5PM where we will demonstrate these tools working seamlessly together for the first time ever – make sure you join us!